Five indices to rank countries well being

In May 2022, Reporters without Borders published their annual results comparing the level of press freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories. Several news agencies in my country (Greece) criticized its placement (pos. 108), a substantial drop from the 2021 70th position. I gathered data from 4 more indices created by non-governmental organizations assessing the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world to compare the results.

So the 5 indices presented below are:

• The World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders
• The Freedom in the World annual report by the Freedom House
• The Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project
• The Corruption Perceptions Index by the Transparency International movement
• The Human Development Index by UN Human Development Report Office

By comparing these indicators, I will try to find similar patterns for each country, which compose a more general picture about the quality of living in them. After the initial presentation of each index I will compare Human development index with each of the 4 others looking for correlations. In the final part of the report, I will create a single composite index using information from all five indices by applying Principal Component Analysis.

World Press Freedom Index by RSF

Who published it?

The World Press Freedom Index is published annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international non-profit and non-governmental organization founded in 1985 in Montpellier (France) by four journalists. RSF's stated mission is safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It assists journalists at risk, training them in digital and physical security and campaigning to raise public awareness of abuse against journalists securing their safety and liberty. It has consultive status with the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organization of Francophonie. The organization's main page is https://rsf.org/en.

Scoring Methodology

The index's ranking is based, on a score ranging from 0 to 100, assigned to each country or territory, with 100 representing the best possible score (the highest possible level of press freedom). 2022 index ranks 180 countries worldwide. It is calculated based on two components:

• a quantitative tally of abuses against journalists and media outlets in connection with their work
• a qualitative analysis of the situation in each country or territory based on the responses of press freedom specialists (including journalists, researchers, academics, and human rights defenders) to an RSF questionnaire available in 23 languages.

Each country or territory's score is evaluated using five contextual indicators: political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and reporter's safety. You can read the World Press Freedom Index presentation along with its analyses and methodology.

Data Preparation

I used a python script to scrape the World Press Freedom Index from their site because the 2022 csv was not right. I am going to use pandas to create the index tables, geopandas to plot the choropleths, seaborn and matplotlib for all the other graphs.

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 180 entries, 0 to 179
Data columns (total 8 columns):
 #   Column        Non-Null Count  Dtype  
---  ------        --------------  -----  
 0   Pos.          180 non-null    int64  
 1   Countries     180 non-null    object 
 2   Global score  180 non-null    float64
 3   Score pol.    180 non-null    float64
 4   Score eco.    180 non-null    float64
 5   Score legis.  180 non-null    float64
 6   Score soc.    180 non-null    float64
 7   Score secu.   180 non-null    float64
dtypes: float64(6), int64(1), object(1)
memory usage: 11.4+ KB

	Pos.	Countries	Global score	Score pol.	Score eco.	Score legis.	Score soc.	Score secu.
0	1	Norway	92.65	94.89	90.38	92.23	93.71	92.03
1	2	Denmark	90.27	94.34	83.67	89.18	91.17	92.97
2	3	Sweden	88.84	91.96	87.66	90.27	90.18	84.14
3	4	Estonia	88.83	91.11	81.97	87.87	90.00	93.20
4	5	Finland	88.42	90.40	82.03	86.64	90.77	92.26

Similar country names:  20
{'Bosnia-Herzegovina': ['Bosnia and Herzegovina', 'The Gambia'],
 'Brunei': ['Brunei Darussalam', 'Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo-Brazzaville': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Democratic Republic of Congo': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo',
                                  'Republic of Congo'],
 'Eswatini': ['Swaziland', 'Saint Kitts and Nevis'],
 'Gambia': ['The Gambia', 'Guam'],
 'Guinea Bissau': ['Guinea-Bissau', 'Nauru'],
 'Haïti': ['Haiti', 'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Ivory Coast': ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Morocco'],
 'Laos': ['Barbados', 'Lao PDR'],
 'Maldives': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Haiti'],
 'Morocco / Western Sahara': ['Morocco', 'Western Sahara'],
 'North Korea': ['Republic of Korea', 'Northern Mariana Islands'],
 'North Macedonia': ['Macedonia', 'New Caledonia'],
 'OECS': ['Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Russia': ['Russian Federation', 'Brunei Darussalam'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'South Korea': ['Republic of Korea', 'Dem. Rep. Korea']}

Countries with no match:  4
{'Maldives': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'OECS': ['Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Seychelles': []}

/tmp/ipykernel_10868/1783930385.py:10: UserWarning: Boolean Series key will be reindexed to match DataFrame index.
  temp = press_index_prev[press_index.Country == 'Morocco'].copy()

(181, 3)

Tables and Visualizations

Worldwide Results

2022 World Press Freedom Index. Data Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Pos.	Country	Overall Score	Political	Economic	Legislation	Sociocultural	Safety
1	Norway	92.65	94.89	90.38	92.23	93.71	92.03
2	Denmark	90.27	94.34	83.67	89.18	91.17	92.97
3	Sweden	88.84	91.96	87.66	90.27	90.18	84.14
4	Estonia	88.83	91.11	81.97	87.87	90.00	93.20
5	Finland	88.42	90.40	82.03	86.64	90.77	92.26
6	Ireland	88.30	89.24	79.08	85.09	92.50	95.58
7	Portugal	87.07	91.86	77.41	84.21	93.14	88.73
8	Costa Rica	85.92	81.62	72.96	87.72	92.50	94.78
9	Lithuania	84.14	87.01	72.16	84.46	89.71	87.37
10	Liechtenstein	84.03	80.36	68.78	84.74	89.80	96.46
11	New Zealand	83.54	90.15	75.26	74.78	89.75	87.76
12	Jamaica	83.35	74.85	71.94	82.46	95.00	92.52
13	Seychelles	83.33	80.45	69.13	85.31	90.25	91.50
14	Switzerland	82.72	90.00	68.37	80.99	88.33	85.92
15	Iceland	82.69	86.21	65.56	82.68	87.50	91.50
16	Germany	82.04	87.03	80.07	87.08	89.47	66.58
17	Timor-Leste	81.89	85.45	68.71	85.96	75.67	93.65
18	Namibia	81.84	72.97	69.80	82.98	91.60	91.84
19	Canada	81.74	82.27	71.17	80.26	92.00	82.99
20	Czech Republic	80.54	79.66	61.56	84.21	88.44	88.81
21	Luxembourg	79.81	82.94	66.33	72.93	88.71	88.14
22	Latvia	79.17	78.96	64.58	80.89	87.36	84.06
23	Belgium	78.86	75.03	71.22	79.30	87.40	81.35
24	United Kingdom	78.71	80.57	72.75	76.63	84.29	79.33
25	Trinidad and Tobago	78.68	73.94	67.86	74.56	84.50	92.52
26	France	78.53	79.85	67.86	86.51	89.38	69.05
27	Slovakia	78.37	71.44	67.98	82.02	86.38	84.01
28	Netherlands	77.93	86.30	82.86	87.28	86.10	47.09
29	Argentina	77.28	76.36	51.53	90.68	85.75	82.06
30	Dominican Republic	76.90	71.52	62.24	85.96	92.00	72.79
31	Austria	76.74	77.82	61.43	78.95	81.20	84.29
32	Spain	76.71	72.73	63.38	82.16	81.89	83.40
33	Bhutan	76.46	78.79	62.24	70.39	77.00	93.88
34	Guyana	76.41	70.06	67.76	75.61	81.40	87.21
35	South Africa	75.56	75.96	62.59	84.36	82.50	72.39
36	Cape Verde	75.37	72.55	62.76	77.98	75.40	88.16
37	Côte d'Ivoire	74.46	74.89	58.45	75.94	81.43	81.60
38	Taiwan	74.08	74.78	51.88	79.01	77.69	87.02
39	Australia	73.77	77.17	63.44	64.18	84.17	79.88
40	Moldova	73.47	70.15	47.83	83.00	85.88	80.48
41	Burkina Faso	73.12	78.99	67.69	75.58	87.83	55.52
42	United States	72.74	72.99	59.33	77.32	81.43	72.63
43	South Korea	72.11	71.15	55.31	72.81	79.80	81.50
44	Uruguay	72.03	70.30	49.32	83.63	72.33	84.58
45	Samoa	71.39	61.82	56.12	64.91	85.00	89.12
46	Sierra Leone	71.03	73.71	50.38	78.40	77.50	75.14
47	Belize	70.67	70.00	52.04	63.60	82.00	85.71
48	Croatia	70.42	68.26	50.46	79.19	76.09	78.08
49	Tonga	69.74	69.70	53.06	66.67	69.50	89.80
50	The Gambia	69.25	71.11	51.36	67.69	81.33	74.74
51	Armenia	68.97	66.26	44.44	77.88	76.33	79.91
52	Suriname	68.95	67.88	55.10	62.28	84.00	75.51
53	Andorra	68.79	68.12	50.41	69.12	68.80	87.48
54	Slovenia	68.54	59.32	47.70	79.11	79.94	76.61
55	OECS	68.49	62.91	48.37	68.25	79.80	83.13
56	Romania	68.46	66.77	46.77	76.46	81.67	70.63
57	North Macedonia	68.44	66.16	43.71	81.29	73.17	77.85
58	Italy	68.16	65.89	47.52	73.93	80.00	73.48
59	Niger	67.80	62.30	46.73	71.75	76.50	81.69
60	Ghana	67.43	66.61	47.22	81.42	79.64	62.25
61	Kosovo	67.00	64.34	45.24	80.85	74.33	70.26
62	Papua New Guinea	66.66	62.42	45.24	66.08	81.33	78.23
63	Montenegro	66.54	62.51	47.67	77.19	71.00	74.33
64	Mauritius	66.07	55.58	47.81	64.16	80.29	82.50
65	Cyprus	65.97	61.21	42.09	74.56	65.75	86.25
66	Poland	65.64	50.95	57.41	68.95	82.53	68.33
67	Bosnia and Herzegovina	65.64	61.56	40.23	79.57	71.86	74.95
68	Ecuador	64.61	60.10	55.44	67.98	69.50	70.03
69	Kenya	64.59	62.42	46.33	72.28	78.00	63.92
70	Haiti	64.55	59.60	50.34	72.22	80.67	59.91
71	Japan	64.37	54.66	53.70	66.23	67.06	80.19
72	Kyrgyzstan	64.25	59.90	48.64	68.86	69.00	74.83
73	Senegal	63.07	59.31	42.13	66.67	72.43	74.84
74	Panama	62.78	54.24	47.45	64.04	74.00	74.15
75	Liberia	62.77	55.50	32.80	74.69	82.57	68.30
76	Nepal	62.67	59.80	40.14	66.08	77.33	69.99
77	Peru	61.75	66.97	41.84	70.61	63.00	66.35
78	Malta	61.55	46.82	41.33	67.98	74.75	76.87
79	Serbia	61.51	47.47	34.92	79.92	74.22	71.03
80	Malawi	61.40	55.76	38.44	78.07	67.67	67.08
81	Northern Cyprus	61.08	56.48	38.78	69.82	60.20	80.14
82	Chile	60.61	65.03	42.86	67.63	72.40	55.15
83	Comoros	60.16	56.36	50.26	59.98	75.63	58.56
84	Guinea	59.82	59.26	47.05	71.15	70.67	50.96
85	Hungary	59.80	47.07	32.31	67.25	67.33	85.03
86	Israel	59.62	65.15	55.10	53.51	77.75	46.61
87	Maldives	59.55	62.27	38.27	67.11	55.00	75.12
88	Lesotho	59.39	57.37	40.14	57.31	74.00	68.11
89	Georgia	59.30	52.42	46.43	80.79	75.50	41.34
90	Mongolia	59.17	55.48	36.18	60.37	69.55	74.27
91	Bulgaria	59.12	54.95	30.10	68.71	66.83	75.02
92	Guinea-Bissau	58.79	51.15	50.82	68.42	62.40	61.18
93	Republic of Congo	58.64	58.06	48.57	64.21	62.60	59.76
94	Tunisia	58.49	61.82	41.84	67.19	70.20	51.42
95	Botswana	58.49	56.97	37.24	56.36	69.75	72.11
96	Paraguay	58.36	54.24	31.12	75.44	65.00	65.99
97	Mauritania	58.10	55.15	35.13	64.29	64.29	71.67
98	Madagascar	58.02	52.58	35.08	64.47	64.50	73.47
99	Angola	57.17	52.83	35.03	61.11	73.00	63.87
100	Togo	57.17	57.52	41.73	61.93	69.50	55.15
101	Central African Republic	56.96	51.21	41.07	62.06	68.25	62.19
102	Fiji	56.91	44.85	39.80	58.33	64.00	77.55
103	Albania	56.41	50.55	29.39	68.77	66.60	66.75
104	Chad	56.18	55.88	43.27	60.35	63.20	58.21
105	Gabon	56.00	48.38	39.46	56.14	65.50	70.52
106	Ukraine	55.76	61.21	42.86	79.45	76.43	18.84
107	Burundi	55.74	50.03	44.67	59.55	52.78	71.66
108	Greece	55.52	60.50	38.13	69.54	65.36	44.10
109	Zambia	55.40	52.35	37.76	58.33	64.00	64.55
110	Brazil	55.36	51.62	37.59	69.74	70.00	47.86
111	Mali	54.48	35.15	42.60	74.34	78.50	41.81
112	El Salvador	54.09	42.94	39.07	63.22	62.86	62.37
113	Malaysia	51.55	46.52	42.60	40.13	56.00	72.48
114	Ethiopia	50.53	50.65	45.77	63.66	57.29	35.29
115	Thailand	50.15	58.99	45.24	47.37	53.67	45.50
116	Mozambique	49.89	46.06	40.31	61.62	47.25	54.21
117	Indonesia	49.27	45.91	41.33	55.70	66.00	37.42
118	Cameroon	49.10	48.05	35.71	56.89	67.57	37.25
119	Qatar	49.03	59.70	46.94	43.86	42.50	52.17
120	Jordan	48.66	40.00	32.65	41.23	66.00	63.40
121	Benin	48.39	47.73	28.19	57.46	55.50	53.10
122	Kazakhstan	48.28	43.52	29.80	51.93	52.30	63.85
123	Tanzania	48.28	43.88	32.65	45.09	59.20	60.56
124	Guatemala	47.94	46.06	33.67	68.86	59.00	32.12
125	Democratic Republic of the Congo	47.66	51.33	41.43	60.88	60.30	24.34
126	Bolivia	47.58	44.55	33.67	58.77	45.00	55.89
127	Mexico	47.57	58.18	43.37	65.79	59.50	11.02
128	South Sudan	47.06	40.48	36.73	52.11	50.60	55.37
129	Nigeria	46.79	45.15	36.39	53.80	69.83	28.75
130	Lebanon	46.58	50.91	38.27	50.22	60.50	33.02
131	Swaziland	46.42	41.31	35.03	43.86	50.50	61.40
132	Uganda	46.35	44.70	36.99	60.96	56.00	33.09
133	Uzbekistan	45.74	44.75	35.71	50.88	53.33	44.03
134	Algeria	45.53	41.21	32.40	54.17	55.88	44.02
135	Western Sahara	45.42	51.67	28.83	55.81	56.00	34.82
135	Morocco	45.42	51.67	28.83	55.81	56.00	34.82
136	Rwanda	45.18	42.12	31.89	57.89	55.25	38.76
137	Zimbabwe	44.94	40.30	32.40	54.17	54.50	43.34
138	United Arab Emirates	44.46	45.45	36.73	32.02	50.50	57.59
139	Singapore	44.23	39.09	29.21	34.21	49.25	69.39
140	Somalia	44.01	51.03	41.22	47.72	61.80	18.27
141	Equatorial Guinea	43.96	42.73	24.49	44.30	44.25	64.04
142	Cambodia	43.48	42.42	27.96	49.65	62.40	34.96
143	Libya	43.16	54.42	34.90	44.91	45.00	36.58
144	Brunei Darussalam	42.53	40.61	30.61	28.51	34.00	78.91
145	Colombia	42.43	44.70	32.27	60.42	50.38	24.40
146	Sri Lanka	42.13	40.91	27.04	53.07	48.25	41.37
147	Philippines	41.84	44.44	23.13	54.97	61.83	24.83
148	Hong Kong	41.64	40.50	35.90	42.58	57.45	31.78
149	Turkey	41.25	38.38	27.55	52.92	55.00	32.37
150	India	41.00	40.76	30.36	57.02	56.25	20.61
151	Sudan	40.96	47.05	29.97	41.45	51.00	35.35
152	Tajikistan	40.26	33.79	29.85	48.68	46.00	42.96
153	Belarus	39.62	32.93	48.75	37.23	60.33	18.85
154	Azerbaijan	39.40	37.66	23.76	48.25	58.86	28.48
155	Russia	38.82	36.36	34.84	44.61	51.29	27.00
156	Afghanistan	38.27	44.65	43.88	42.54	43.33	16.96
157	Pakistan	37.99	39.57	31.92	53.26	47.43	17.75
158	Kuwait	37.87	32.73	19.39	36.84	27.00	73.41
159	Venezuela	37.78	33.70	31.73	44.74	47.50	31.22
160	Nicaragua	37.09	37.45	38.78	31.75	49.80	27.68
161	Lao PDR	36.64	36.06	20.92	31.58	44.00	50.64
162	Bangladesh	36.63	42.12	32.48	44.15	48.50	15.88
163	Oman	35.99	32.73	23.98	18.42	45.00	59.82
164	Djibouti	35.75	32.73	16.12	37.72	37.60	54.56
165	Honduras	34.61	33.33	31.63	36.84	31.00	40.22
166	Saudi Arabia	33.71	37.27	33.67	22.37	36.50	38.75
167	Bahrain	30.97	35.15	21.43	28.95	39.67	29.65
168	Egypt	30.23	30.91	23.47	34.87	44.25	17.64
169	Yemen	29.14	33.03	27.55	38.60	35.00	11.54
170	Palestine	28.98	35.45	15.82	36.40	36.50	20.74
171	Syria	28.94	33.51	27.62	33.58	36.57	13.39
172	Iraq	28.59	34.14	20.07	29.82	40.67	18.27
173	Cuba	27.32	27.27	39.80	15.79	27.50	26.24
174	Vietnam	26.11	32.32	18.71	27.49	34.67	17.37
175	China	25.17	27.45	26.02	23.25	33.30	15.84
176	Myanmar	25.03	40.40	29.25	20.18	30.67	4.63
177	Turkmenistan	25.01	25.00	11.73	29.61	23.00	35.69
178	Iran	23.22	30.71	21.32	26.71	23.78	13.61
179	Eritrea	19.62	22.22	19.73	25.15	19.67	11.36
180	North Korea	13.92	22.42	0.00	22.81	12.00	12.38

European Results

Bellow there is a list of 44 European Countries based on United Nations statistics to filter the indices.

2022 World Press Freedom Index (European Countries). Data Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Pos.	Country	Overall Score	Political	Economic	Legislation	Sociocultural	Safety
1	Norway	92.65	94.89	90.38	92.23	93.71	92.03
2	Denmark	90.27	94.34	83.67	89.18	91.17	92.97
3	Sweden	88.84	91.96	87.66	90.27	90.18	84.14
4	Estonia	88.83	91.11	81.97	87.87	90.00	93.20
5	Finland	88.42	90.40	82.03	86.64	90.77	92.26
6	Ireland	88.30	89.24	79.08	85.09	92.50	95.58
7	Portugal	87.07	91.86	77.41	84.21	93.14	88.73
8	Lithuania	84.14	87.01	72.16	84.46	89.71	87.37
9	Liechtenstein	84.03	80.36	68.78	84.74	89.80	96.46
10	Switzerland	82.72	90.00	68.37	80.99	88.33	85.92
11	Iceland	82.69	86.21	65.56	82.68	87.50	91.50
12	Germany	82.04	87.03	80.07	87.08	89.47	66.58
13	Czech Republic	80.54	79.66	61.56	84.21	88.44	88.81
14	Luxembourg	79.81	82.94	66.33	72.93	88.71	88.14
15	Latvia	79.17	78.96	64.58	80.89	87.36	84.06
16	Belgium	78.86	75.03	71.22	79.30	87.40	81.35
17	United Kingdom	78.71	80.57	72.75	76.63	84.29	79.33
18	France	78.53	79.85	67.86	86.51	89.38	69.05
19	Slovakia	78.37	71.44	67.98	82.02	86.38	84.01
20	Netherlands	77.93	86.30	82.86	87.28	86.10	47.09
21	Austria	76.74	77.82	61.43	78.95	81.20	84.29
22	Spain	76.71	72.73	63.38	82.16	81.89	83.40
23	Moldova	73.47	70.15	47.83	83.00	85.88	80.48
24	Croatia	70.42	68.26	50.46	79.19	76.09	78.08
25	Andorra	68.79	68.12	50.41	69.12	68.80	87.48
26	Slovenia	68.54	59.32	47.70	79.11	79.94	76.61
27	Romania	68.46	66.77	46.77	76.46	81.67	70.63
28	North Macedonia	68.44	66.16	43.71	81.29	73.17	77.85
29	Italy	68.16	65.89	47.52	73.93	80.00	73.48
30	Montenegro	66.54	62.51	47.67	77.19	71.00	74.33
31	Poland	65.64	50.95	57.41	68.95	82.53	68.33
32	Bosnia and Herzegovina	65.64	61.56	40.23	79.57	71.86	74.95
33	Malta	61.55	46.82	41.33	67.98	74.75	76.87
34	Serbia	61.51	47.47	34.92	79.92	74.22	71.03
35	Hungary	59.80	47.07	32.31	67.25	67.33	85.03
36	Bulgaria	59.12	54.95	30.10	68.71	66.83	75.02
37	Albania	56.41	50.55	29.39	68.77	66.60	66.75
38	Ukraine	55.76	61.21	42.86	79.45	76.43	18.84
39	Greece	55.52	60.50	38.13	69.54	65.36	44.10
40	Belarus	39.62	32.93	48.75	37.23	60.33	18.85
41	Russia	38.82	36.36	34.84	44.61	51.29	27.00

Aggregations

Notes

According to the 2022 edition of the World Press Freedom Index, the five leading countries are all located in northern Europe, four Nordic countries and Estonia. Most of the low-ranking countries are located in Asia and north Africa. Notable exceptions are South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia and Israel in Asia and Tunisia in north Africa. On the other hand, 5 american countries standing out for their low score, Cuba, Ondura, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Colombia.

Greece, after the drop of 38 places compared to 2021, is only third to last in Europe, with a worse score than all the Balkan countries except for Russia and Belarus. Even in the 2021 ranking, Greece was only in 30th place out of 41 countries, worse than most countries in the European Union.

Based on RSF's report, press freedom in Greece suffered serious setbacks in 2021 and 2022, with journalists regularly prevented from covering issues from migration to Covid-19. Furthermore is noted the assassination of veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz in April 2021 remains unsolved.

Freedom in the World Report by Freedom House

Who published it?

The Freedom in the World report has been published since 1973 by the Freedom House, assessing the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world. The Freedom House is a non-profit organization founded in Washington, D.C. in October 1941 by the U.S. government. It contacts research and advocates for democracy, political freedom, and human rights, though it has been criticized of being biased towards U.S. interests because of its funding. I You can find more information about the Freedom House and its action on its website: https://freedomhouse.org/about-us

Score Methodology

Freedom in the World report produces annual scores representing the levels of political rights and civil liberties for 195 countries and 15 territories. External analysts access each country using a combination of on-the-ground research, consultations with local contracts, and information from news articles, non-governmental organizations, governments, and other sources. Expert advisers, regional specialists, and Freedom House staff presents the results based on the analysts' conclusions. It is widely reported in the media and used as a source of research to measure democracy by policymakers, journalists, academics, and activists.

A country or territory is awarded from 0 to 4 points for each of 10 political rights indicators and 15 civil liberties indicators, which take the form of questions. A score of 4 represents the greatest degree of freedom. Political rights questions are grouped into four subcategories:

• Electoral Process (3 questions)
• Political Pluralism and Participation (4 questions)
• Functioning of Government (3 questions)

Civil liberties questions are grouped into four subcategories:

• Freedom of Expression and Belief (4 questions)
• Associational and Organizational Rights (3 questions)
• Rule of Law (4 questions)
• Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights (4 questions).

The political rights section also contains an additional discretionary question addressing forced demographic change. For the discretionary question, a score of 1 to 4 may be subtracted, as applicable (the worse the situation, the more points may be subtracted). The highest overall score that can be awarded is 100, consisting of 40 points for political rights and 60 points for civil liberties.

For more details about Freedom in the World Research methodology, you can read their report here. Also, here you can download the dataset I will use below.

Data Preparation

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 3549 entries, 0 to 3548
Data columns (total 13 columns):
 #   Column             Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------             --------------  ----- 
 0   Country/Territory  3549 non-null   object
 1   Edition            3549 non-null   int64 
 2   A                  3549 non-null   int64 
 3   B                  3549 non-null   int64 
 4   C                  3549 non-null   int64 
 5   Add Q              3549 non-null   int64 
 6   PR                 3549 non-null   int64 
 7   D                  3549 non-null   int64 
 8   E                  3549 non-null   int64 
 9   F                  3549 non-null   int64 
 10  G                  3549 non-null   int64 
 11  CL                 3549 non-null   int64 
 12  Total              3549 non-null   int64 
dtypes: int64(12), object(1)
memory usage: 360.6+ KB

	Country/Territory	Edition	A	B	C	Add Q	PR	D	E	F	G	CL	Total
0	Abkhazia	2022	5	8	4	0	17	8	6	4	5	23	40
1	Afghanistan	2022	0	0	1	0	1	4	3	0	2	9	10
2	Albania	2022	9	12	7	0	28	13	8	9	9	39	67
3	Algeria	2022	3	4	3	0	10	6	3	6	7	22	32
4	Andorra	2022	12	15	11	0	38	14	11	15	15	55	93

Similar country names:  27
{'Abkhazia': ['Aruba'],
 'Brunei': ['Brunei Darussalam', 'Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo (Brazzaville)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Congo (Kinshasa)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Cook Islands'],
 "Cote d'Ivoire": ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Cape Verde'],
 'Crimea': ['Ashmore and Cartier Islands'],
 'Eastern Donbas': ['New Caledonia'],
 'Eswatini': ['Palestine', 'Swaziland'],
 'Gaza Strip': [],
 'Indian Kashmir': ['Indian Ocean Territories'],
 'Laos': ['Lao PDR'],
 'Maldives': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Mauritius': ['Saint-Martin'],
 'Micronesia': ['Federated States of Micronesia', 'French Polynesia'],
 'Nagorno-Karabakh': ['Aruba'],
 'Pakistani Kashmir': [],
 'Sao Tome and Principe': ['São Tomé and Principe',
                           'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'South Ossetia': [],
 'St. Kitts and Nevis': ['Saint Kitts and Nevis',
                         'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'St. Lucia': ['Saint Lucia', 'Siachen Glacier'],
 'St. Vincent and the Grenadines': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines',
                                    'São Tomé and Principe'],
 'Tibet': ['Palestine', 'Saint Kitts and Nevis'],
 'Transnistria': [],
 'Tuvalu': [],
 'West Bank': []}

Tables and Visualizations

Worldwide Results

2022 Freedom in the World Index. Data Source: Freedom House

Pos.	Country	Total Score	Electoral Process	Political Pluralism	Functioning of Goverment	Discretionary Question	Political Rights Subtotal	Freedom of Expression and Belief	Associational and Organizational Rights	Rule of Law	Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights	Civil Liberties Subtotal
1	Finland	100	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	16	16	60
2	Norway	100	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	16	16	60
3	Sweden	100	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	16	16	60
4	New Zealand	99	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	15	16	59
5	Canada	98	12	16	12	0	40	15	12	15	16	58
6	Denmark	97	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	14	15	57
7	Ireland	97	12	16	11	0	39	16	12	14	16	58
8	Luxembourg	97	12	16	10	0	38	16	12	15	16	59
9	Netherlands	97	12	16	11	0	39	16	12	15	15	58
10	Uruguay	97	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	14	15	57
11	Belgium	96	12	16	11	0	39	15	12	15	15	57
12	Japan	96	12	16	12	0	40	15	12	15	14	56
13	Switzerland	96	12	15	12	0	39	15	12	15	15	57
14	Australia	95	12	15	12	0	39	15	12	15	14	56
15	Barbados	95	12	16	10	0	38	16	12	14	15	57
16	Portugal	95	12	16	11	0	39	16	11	14	15	56
17	Chile	94	12	15	11	0	38	16	12	13	15	56
18	Estonia	94	12	15	11	0	38	16	12	14	14	56
19	Germany	94	12	15	12	0	39	14	12	14	15	55
20	Iceland	94	12	15	10	0	37	15	12	15	15	57
21	Taiwan	94	12	15	11	0	38	16	11	15	14	56
22	Andorra	93	12	15	11	0	38	14	11	15	15	55
23	Austria	93	12	15	10	0	37	14	12	15	15	56
24	Cyprus	93	12	15	11	0	38	15	11	15	14	55
25	Dominica	93	11	16	10	0	37	15	11	15	15	56
26	Kiribati	93	12	15	10	0	37	16	12	15	13	56
27	Marshall Islands	93	12	16	10	0	38	16	11	15	13	55
28	San Marino	93	12	15	11	0	38	15	12	13	15	55
29	Tuvalu	93	12	15	10	0	37	16	12	15	13	56
30	United Kingdom	93	12	16	11	0	39	14	12	13	15	54
31	Cape Verde	92	12	16	10	0	38	16	11	14	13	54
32	Federated States of Micronesia	92	12	15	10	0	37	16	11	15	13	55
33	Palau	92	12	15	10	0	37	16	11	15	13	55
34	Saint Lucia	92	11	16	11	0	38	15	12	13	14	54
35	Bahamas	91	12	16	10	0	38	15	12	13	13	53
36	Costa Rica	91	12	15	11	0	38	16	11	13	13	53
37	Czech Republic	91	12	15	9	0	36	14	12	14	15	55
38	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	91	11	15	10	0	36	15	12	14	14	55
39	Italy	90	12	14	10	0	36	15	12	13	14	54
40	Liechtenstein	90	10	13	10	0	33	16	12	14	15	57
41	Slovakia	90	12	15	10	0	37	15	12	12	14	53
42	Slovenia	90	12	16	10	0	38	14	10	14	14	52
43	Spain	90	12	16	9	0	37	14	11	13	15	53
44	France	89	12	15	11	0	38	14	10	13	14	51
45	Grenada	89	11	16	10	0	37	15	11	13	13	52
46	Lithuania	89	12	16	10	0	38	15	11	11	14	51
47	Malta	89	12	14	9	0	35	14	12	14	14	54
48	Saint Kitts and Nevis	89	10	15	10	0	35	16	12	13	13	54
49	Latvia	88	12	15	10	0	37	14	12	11	14	51
50	Belize	87	12	14	8	0	34	16	11	13	13	53
51	Greece	87	12	15	10	0	37	14	11	11	14	50
52	Mauritius	86	11	15	10	0	36	14	11	13	12	50
53	Antigua and Barbuda	85	12	13	8	0	33	15	10	14	13	52
54	Croatia	85	12	14	10	0	36	13	12	11	13	49
55	Argentina	84	11	16	8	0	35	15	11	10	13	49
56	Monaco	84	8	10	9	0	27	16	12	14	15	57
57	Mongolia	84	11	16	9	0	36	14	11	11	12	48
58	São Tomé and Principe	84	11	15	9	0	35	15	11	12	11	49
59	Panama	83	12	15	8	0	35	15	11	10	12	48
60	Romania	83	12	14	9	0	35	13	11	12	12	48
61	Samoa	83	9	14	9	0	32	14	11	14	12	51
62	South Korea	83	11	13	9	0	33	14	11	12	13	50
63	United States	83	10	13	9	0	32	14	11	11	15	51
64	Trinidad and Tobago	82	11	13	9	0	33	16	11	9	13	49
65	Vanuatu	82	10	15	8	0	33	14	11	13	11	49
66	Poland	81	10	16	8	0	34	13	10	10	14	47
67	Ghana	80	12	13	10	0	35	14	10	10	11	45
68	Jamaica	80	12	13	9	0	34	15	11	9	11	46
69	Bulgaria	79	11	14	8	0	33	13	11	10	12	46
70	Seychelles	79	12	13	9	0	34	14	9	11	11	45
71	Solomon Islands	79	9	14	7	0	30	16	10	11	12	49
72	South Africa	79	12	13	8	0	33	15	12	9	10	46
73	Suriname	79	11	14	9	0	34	15	11	9	10	45
74	Tonga	79	9	14	7	0	30	14	10	12	13	49
75	Namibia	77	11	12	8	0	31	14	11	11	10	46
76	Nauru	77	12	14	8	0	34	13	9	9	12	43
77	Northern Cyprus	77	9	12	6	0	27	15	11	13	11	50
78	Israel	76	12	13	9	0	34	12	8	11	11	42
79	Brazil	73	10	14	7	0	31	13	9	8	12	42
80	Guyana	73	9	13	8	0	30	15	11	8	9	43
81	Botswana	72	10	10	8	0	28	12	10	11	11	44
82	Peru	72	10	13	7	0	30	15	8	8	11	42
83	Timor-Leste	72	11	14	8	0	33	14	8	8	9	39
84	Ecuador	71	11	13	7	0	31	13	9	8	10	40
85	Hungary	69	9	11	6	0	26	10	10	10	13	43
86	Dominican Republic	68	9	11	7	0	27	14	10	8	9	41
87	Senegal	68	9	12	8	0	29	13	7	8	11	39
88	Albania	67	9	12	7	0	28	13	8	9	9	39
89	Montenegro	67	9	11	6	0	26	12	9	9	11	41
90	North Macedonia	67	9	12	7	0	28	12	8	9	10	39
91	Bolivia	66	10	10	7	0	27	14	9	6	10	39
92	India	66	12	12	9	0	33	9	7	8	9	33
93	Malawi	66	9	12	8	0	29	13	8	9	7	37
94	Paraguay	65	10	12	6	0	28	12	8	7	10	37
95	Sierra Leone	65	10	11	7	0	28	12	6	9	10	37
96	Colombia	64	10	11	8	0	29	12	5	9	9	35
97	Tunisia	64	9	13	4	0	26	12	7	9	10	38
98	Lesotho	63	10	11	6	0	27	12	7	8	9	36
99	Moldova	62	10	12	5	0	27	12	8	6	9	35
100	Papua New Guinea	62	7	13	3	0	23	14	10	7	8	39
101	Serbia	62	7	9	5	0	21	12	8	9	12	41
102	Bhutan	61	10	12	8	1	29	9	5	9	9	32
103	Madagascar	61	9	11	7	0	27	11	8	7	8	34
104	Ukraine	61	9	12	5	0	26	11	8	6	10	35
105	Liberia	60	8	12	7	0	27	11	7	6	9	33
106	Mexico	60	9	13	5	0	27	12	7	5	9	33
107	Benin	59	3	9	5	0	17	14	8	10	10	42
108	El Salvador	59	10	12	4	0	26	11	8	6	8	33
109	Indonesia	59	11	13	6	0	30	9	6	5	9	29
110	Fiji	58	7	9	7	0	23	11	7	7	10	35
111	Georgia	58	7	8	7	0	22	9	7	8	12	36
112	Nepal	57	10	10	5	0	25	10	7	7	8	32
113	Kosovo	56	9	11	5	0	25	9	8	6	8	31
114	Armenia	55	7	10	6	0	23	9	8	6	9	32
115	Philippines	55	9	10	6	0	25	11	6	3	10	30
116	Sri Lanka	55	9	10	5	1	23	8	9	7	8	32
117	Bosnia and Herzegovina	53	6	9	4	0	19	10	7	7	10	34
118	Burkina Faso	53	7	10	6	0	23	11	7	5	7	30
119	Guatemala	51	7	10	4	0	21	11	6	5	8	30
120	Niger	51	8	9	6	0	23	10	6	6	6	28
121	Zambia	51	6	11	4	0	21	8	6	8	8	30
122	Malaysia	50	6	9	5	0	20	8	6	7	9	30
123	Côte d'Ivoire	49	6	9	4	0	19	10	7	6	7	30
124	Somaliland	49	7	10	5	0	22	8	6	7	6	27
125	Kenya	48	6	8	5	0	19	10	7	5	7	29
126	Honduras	47	8	9	4	0	21	9	5	4	8	26
127	Singapore	47	4	8	7	0	19	7	3	7	11	28
128	The Gambia	47	8	9	4	0	21	8	6	6	6	26
129	Guinea-Bissau	43	7	8	2	0	17	10	6	5	5	26
130	Hong Kong	43	0	5	5	0	10	8	3	9	13	33
131	Mozambique	43	3	7	4	0	14	9	6	6	8	29
132	Nigeria	43	6	9	5	0	20	9	6	4	4	23
133	Comoros	42	5	7	4	0	16	8	6	6	6	26
134	Lebanon	42	5	7	1	0	13	10	8	5	6	29
135	Togo	42	4	6	5	0	15	9	5	6	7	27
136	Abkhazia	40	5	8	4	0	17	8	6	4	5	23
137	Maldives	40	7	8	4	0	19	3	5	6	7	21
138	Bangladesh	39	4	7	4	0	15	6	5	4	9	24
139	Kuwait	37	3	7	4	0	14	6	4	7	6	23
140	Morocco	37	5	5	3	0	13	7	5	5	7	24
141	Pakistan	37	5	6	4	0	15	6	6	4	6	22
142	Nagorno-Karabakh	36	7	7	3	1	16	7	6	3	4	20
143	Mauritania	35	6	4	4	0	14	9	4	4	4	21
144	Guinea	34	1	7	2	0	10	10	4	4	6	24
145	Tanzania	34	3	5	4	0	12	7	4	4	7	22
146	Uganda	34	3	5	3	0	11	8	4	4	7	23
147	Haiti	33	3	5	3	0	11	9	4	4	5	22
148	Jordan	33	2	6	3	0	11	7	1	7	7	22
149	Algeria	32	3	4	3	0	10	6	3	6	7	22
150	Mali	32	1	5	2	0	8	10	6	4	4	24
151	Turkey	32	5	8	3	0	16	5	3	3	5	16
152	Angola	30	3	5	2	0	10	7	5	5	3	20
153	Iraq	29	8	7	2	1	16	4	4	1	4	13
154	Pakistani Kashmir	29	4	4	3	2	9	6	4	4	6	20
155	Thailand	29	1	2	2	0	5	6	3	5	10	24
156	Brunei Darussalam	28	0	3	4	0	7	6	3	5	7	21
157	Zimbabwe	28	3	5	3	0	11	7	3	2	5	17
158	Indian Kashmir	27	2	3	2	0	7	6	3	4	7	20
159	Kyrgyzstan	27	2	3	0	1	4	10	4	2	7	23
160	Qatar	25	2	2	3	0	7	7	2	5	4	18
161	Cambodia	24	1	2	2	0	5	7	3	3	6	19
162	Djibouti	24	2	3	0	0	5	6	3	4	6	19
163	Oman	24	2	2	2	0	6	5	4	4	5	18
164	Ethiopia	23	4	4	4	0	12	4	3	1	3	11
165	Kazakhstan	23	1	3	1	0	5	4	2	4	8	18
166	Nicaragua	23	0	3	2	0	5	5	2	3	8	18
167	West Bank	23	1	4	2	3	4	6	4	4	5	19
168	Rwanda	22	2	2	4	0	8	3	2	2	7	14
169	Gabon	21	0	2	1	0	3	7	3	3	5	18
170	Democratic Republic of the Congo	19	1	2	1	0	4	7	3	1	4	15
171	Russia	19	0	3	2	0	5	3	2	2	7	14
172	Vietnam	19	0	1	2	0	3	3	1	4	8	16
173	Egypt	18	2	2	2	0	6	3	1	2	6	12
174	Transnistria	18	1	4	1	0	6	4	1	2	5	12
175	Republic of Congo	17	0	2	0	0	2	6	2	1	6	15
176	Swaziland	17	0	1	0	0	1	5	2	4	5	16
177	United Arab Emirates	17	1	2	2	0	5	3	2	3	4	12
178	Cameroon	15	1	3	2	0	6	4	2	0	3	9
179	Chad	15	0	1	0	0	1	6	4	1	3	14
180	Burundi	14	1	3	0	0	4	4	1	1	4	10
181	Iran	14	2	2	0	0	4	2	1	3	4	10
182	Venezuela	14	0	1	0	0	1	6	2	1	4	13
183	Lao PDR	13	0	0	2	0	2	3	0	2	6	11
184	Bahrain	12	2	0	2	2	2	2	1	1	6	10
185	Cuba	12	0	0	1	0	1	4	0	1	6	11
186	Gaza Strip	11	0	2	1	0	3	4	2	0	2	8
187	South Ossetia	11	2	2	0	2	2	3	2	1	3	9
188	Uzbekistan	11	1	0	1	0	2	3	1	1	4	9
189	Afghanistan	10	0	0	1	0	1	4	3	0	2	9
190	Sudan	10	0	2	0	2	0	5	2	0	3	10
191	Azerbaijan	9	0	2	0	0	2	2	1	0	4	7
192	China	9	0	0	1	3	-2	1	2	2	6	11
193	Libya	9	0	1	0	0	1	4	2	0	2	8
194	Myanmar	9	0	3	1	4	0	3	2	0	4	9
195	Yemen	9	0	1	0	0	1	2	3	1	2	8
196	Belarus	8	0	1	1	0	2	1	0	0	5	6
197	Tajikistan	8	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	1	4	8
198	Central African Republic	7	2	2	0	1	3	3	1	0	0	4
199	Crimea	7	0	0	0	2	-2	2	1	0	6	9
200	Saudi Arabia	7	0	0	1	0	1	2	0	2	2	6
201	Somalia	7	0	1	0	0	1	3	3	0	0	6
202	Equatorial Guinea	5	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	3	5
203	Eastern Donbas	4	0	0	0	1	-1	2	0	0	3	5
204	Western Sahara	4	0	0	0	3	-3	3	0	0	4	7
205	Eritrea	3	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	2
206	North Korea	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	3
207	Turkmenistan	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2
208	South Sudan	1	0	1	0	4	-3	2	2	0	0	4
209	Syria	1	0	0	0	3	-3	3	0	0	1	4
210	Tibet	1	0	0	1	3	-2	0	0	0	3	3

<class 'geopandas.geodataframe.GeoDataFrame'>
Int64Index: 232 entries, 0 to 231
Data columns (total 18 columns):
 #   Column                                   Non-Null Count  Dtype   
---  ------                                   --------------  -----   
 0   name_long                                232 non-null    object  
 1   subregion                                232 non-null    object  
 2   region_wb                                232 non-null    object  
 3   geometry                                 232 non-null    geometry
 4   pop_est                                  232 non-null    int64   
 5   Country                                  195 non-null    object  
 6   Electoral Process                        195 non-null    float64 
 7   Political Pluralism                      195 non-null    float64 
 8   Functioning of Goverment                 195 non-null    float64 
 9   Discretionary Question                   195 non-null    float64 
 10  Political Rights Subtotal                195 non-null    float64 
 11  Freedom of Expression and Belief         195 non-null    float64 
 12  Associational and Organizational Rights  195 non-null    float64 
 13  Rule of Law                              195 non-null    float64 
 14  Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights  195 non-null    float64 
 15  Civil Liberties Subtotal                 195 non-null    float64 
 16  Total Score                              195 non-null    float64 
 17  Pos.                                     195 non-null    float64 
dtypes: float64(12), geometry(1), int64(1), object(4)
memory usage: 34.4+ KB

European Results

Freedom in the World Index (European Countries). Data Source: Freedom House

Pos.	Country	Total Score	Electoral Process	Political Pluralism	Functioning of Goverment	Discretionary Question	Political Rights Subtotal	Freedom of Expression and Belief	Associational and Organizational Rights	Rule of Law	Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights	Civil Liberties Subtotal
1	Finland	100	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	16	16	60
2	Norway	100	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	16	16	60
3	Sweden	100	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	16	16	60
4	Denmark	97	12	16	12	0	40	16	12	14	15	57
5	Ireland	97	12	16	11	0	39	16	12	14	16	58
6	Luxembourg	97	12	16	10	0	38	16	12	15	16	59
7	Netherlands	97	12	16	11	0	39	16	12	15	15	58
8	Belgium	96	12	16	11	0	39	15	12	15	15	57
9	Switzerland	96	12	15	12	0	39	15	12	15	15	57
10	Portugal	95	12	16	11	0	39	16	11	14	15	56
11	Estonia	94	12	15	11	0	38	16	12	14	14	56
12	Germany	94	12	15	12	0	39	14	12	14	15	55
13	Iceland	94	12	15	10	0	37	15	12	15	15	57
14	Andorra	93	12	15	11	0	38	14	11	15	15	55
15	Austria	93	12	15	10	0	37	14	12	15	15	56
16	San Marino	93	12	15	11	0	38	15	12	13	15	55
17	United Kingdom	93	12	16	11	0	39	14	12	13	15	54
18	Czech Republic	91	12	15	9	0	36	14	12	14	15	55
19	Italy	90	12	14	10	0	36	15	12	13	14	54
20	Liechtenstein	90	10	13	10	0	33	16	12	14	15	57
21	Slovakia	90	12	15	10	0	37	15	12	12	14	53
22	Slovenia	90	12	16	10	0	38	14	10	14	14	52
23	Spain	90	12	16	9	0	37	14	11	13	15	53
24	France	89	12	15	11	0	38	14	10	13	14	51
25	Lithuania	89	12	16	10	0	38	15	11	11	14	51
26	Malta	89	12	14	9	0	35	14	12	14	14	54
27	Latvia	88	12	15	10	0	37	14	12	11	14	51
28	Greece	87	12	15	10	0	37	14	11	11	14	50
29	Croatia	85	12	14	10	0	36	13	12	11	13	49
30	Monaco	84	8	10	9	0	27	16	12	14	15	57
31	Romania	83	12	14	9	0	35	13	11	12	12	48
32	Poland	81	10	16	8	0	34	13	10	10	14	47
33	Bulgaria	79	11	14	8	0	33	13	11	10	12	46
34	Hungary	69	9	11	6	0	26	10	10	10	13	43
35	Albania	67	9	12	7	0	28	13	8	9	9	39
36	Montenegro	67	9	11	6	0	26	12	9	9	11	41
37	North Macedonia	67	9	12	7	0	28	12	8	9	10	39
38	Moldova	62	10	12	5	0	27	12	8	6	9	35
39	Serbia	62	7	9	5	0	21	12	8	9	12	41
40	Ukraine	61	9	12	5	0	26	11	8	6	10	35
41	Bosnia and Herzegovina	53	6	9	4	0	19	10	7	7	10	34
42	Russia	19	0	3	2	0	5	3	2	2	7	14
43	Belarus	8	0	1	1	0	2	1	0	0	5	6

Aggregations

Notes

As far as civil liberties and political rights are concerned, along with New Zealand and Canada the 4 Nordic countries, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are yet again in the top 6 positions on the Freedom in the World index.

Asia: Similar to the Press index countries such as Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, Bhutan, Georgia, and Armenia are the bright exception compared to the rest of the Asian countries. A notable difference is India which also received a positive score. Sri Lanka is also ranked well but it will be interesting to see next year's ranking after the recent events in the country.

Africa: Most African countries fare much worse than their respective rankings in the World Press Freedom Index. Notable exceptions are southern countries such as Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, and Madagascar. As well as countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as Ghana, Benin, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

America: Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba are again in a significantly worse position than the rest of North and South America. The same countries also scored low in the World Press Freedom index.

Europe: Most European countries score highly on the Freedom in the World index with 31 out of 41 maintaining a score of 79 or more. Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine, and some Balkan countries receive a mediocre score. As in the case of the World press index, Russia and Belarus receive the worst score by far. It is worth noting, that the countries in the middle of the rank and below have received the same position as in the previous year with no discernable improvement.

Greece is ranked 51st worldwide and 27th among European countries, placing it higher than the rest of the Balkan countries but last compared to the countries of the European Union. Most of the lost points are in the civil liberties subcategory probably due to discrimination against racial and ethnic minority groups as well as policies on asylum and immigration.

WJP Rule of Law Index

The Rule of Law Index relies on national surveys of more than 138.000 households and 4.200 legal practitioners and experts' surveys to measure how the rule of law is experienced and perceived worldwide, covering 139 countries and jurisdictions.

Who published it?

It is published annually by the World Justice Project (WJP), an international civil society organization with the stated mission of "working to create knowledge, build awareness, and stimulate action to advance the rule of law worldwide". WJP was founded by William H. Neukom and William C. Hubbard in 2006 as a presidential initiative of the American Bar Association and with the support of 21 partners. It became independent in 2009 with offices in Washington, Mexico City, and Seattle.

Score Methodology

The score is assessed through 44 indicators organized around 9 factors:

• Constraints on Government Powers
• Absence of Corruption
• Open Government
• Fundamental Rights
• Order and Security
• Regulatory Enforcement
• Civil Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Informal Justice

The results are collected through a set of five questionnaires administered to experts and the general public. More than 300 local experts are selected per country by the WJP and local polling companies implement the household surveys.

Those questionnaires are codified as numeric values, aggregated by country, and normalized. Then the normalized scores are aggregated into factors using simple averages that produce the final ranking. The score ranges from 0 to 1. The latest published data is for 2021.

According to the index, effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease, and protects people from both major and more minor injustices. It is the foundation for communities of justice, opportunity, and peace underpinning development, accountable government, and respect for fundamental rights.

You can learn more about the World of Justice Project on their site https://worldjusticeproject.org/about-us.

Their methodology is analyzed here and you can download the dataset here.

Data Preparation

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
Int64Index: 139 entries, 1 to 139
Data columns (total 10 columns):
 #   Column                           Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------                           --------------  ----- 
 0   Country                          139 non-null    object
 1   Overall Score                    139 non-null    object
 2   Constraints on Goverment Powers  139 non-null    object
 3   Absense of Corruption            139 non-null    object
 4   Open Government                  139 non-null    object
 5   Fundamental Rights               139 non-null    object
 6   Order and Security               139 non-null    object
 7   Regulatory Enforcement           139 non-null    object
 8   Civil Justice                    139 non-null    object
 9   Criminal Justice                 139 non-null    object
dtypes: object(10)
memory usage: 11.9+ KB

	Country	Overall Score	Constraints on Goverment Powers	Absense of Corruption	Open Government	Fundamental Rights	Order and Security	Regulatory Enforcement	Civil Justice	Criminal Justice
1	Afghanistan	0.352819	0.422913	0.296204	0.392979	0.401684	0.29605	0.360464	0.345449	0.30681
2	Albania	0.491574	0.427895	0.368125	0.468726	0.577107	0.77915	0.434221	0.472583	0.404783
3	Algeria	0.491954	0.475444	0.446689	0.353974	0.447246	0.754499	0.481974	0.550387	0.425419
4	Angola	0.427656	0.428918	0.435283	0.388427	0.387073	0.573123	0.425326	0.435201	0.347895
5	Antigua and Barbuda	0.63371	0.608021	0.594526	0.539114	0.702043	0.782952	0.632715	0.679421	0.530887

Similar country names:  16
{'Congo, Dem. Rep.': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Republic of Congo'],
 'Congo, Rep.': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Republic of Congo'],
 "Cote d'Ivoire": ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Cape Verde'],
 'Egypt, Arab Rep.': ['Egypt', 'Qatar'],
 'Hong Kong SAR, China': ['Hong Kong', 'Tonga'],
 'Iran, Islamic Rep.': ['Iran', 'Iraq'],
 'Korea, Rep.': ['North Korea', 'South Korea'],
 'Kyrgyz Republic': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo',
                     'Central African Republic'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'Russian Federation': ['Russia', 'Iran'],
 'Slovak Republic': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo',
                     'Central African Republic'],
 'St. Kitts and Nevis': ['Saint Kitts and Nevis',
                         'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'St. Lucia': ['Saint Lucia', 'Libya'],
 'St. Vincent and the Grenadines': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines',
                                    'São Tomé and Principe'],
 'The Bahamas': ['Bahamas', 'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Venezuela, RB': ['Venezuela', 'Lao PDR']}

Tables and Visualizations

Worldwide Results

2021 Rule of Law Index. Data Source: World Justice Project (WJP)

Pos.	Country	Overall Score	Constraints on Goverment Powers	Absense of Corruption	Open Government	Fundamental Rights	Order and Security	Regulatory Enforcement	Civil Justice	Criminal Justice
1	Denmark	0.90	0.94	0.95	0.87	0.92	0.92	0.89	0.86	0.83
2	Norway	0.90	0.94	0.94	0.89	0.91	0.93	0.88	0.85	0.85
3	Finland	0.88	0.92	0.89	0.87	0.90	0.92	0.87	0.82	0.84
4	Sweden	0.86	0.87	0.90	0.86	0.87	0.92	0.84	0.83	0.80
5	Germany	0.84	0.86	0.83	0.80	0.85	0.89	0.86	0.84	0.79
6	Netherlands	0.83	0.85	0.87	0.82	0.84	0.85	0.85	0.83	0.75
7	New Zealand	0.83	0.86	0.88	0.82	0.82	0.89	0.86	0.78	0.74
8	Luxembourg	0.83	0.82	0.87	0.79	0.85	0.93	0.85	0.79	0.73
9	Austria	0.81	0.85	0.82	0.70	0.85	0.91	0.82	0.75	0.80
10	Ireland	0.81	0.82	0.80	0.80	0.82	0.94	0.81	0.74	0.72
11	Estonia	0.81	0.83	0.80	0.80	0.82	0.89	0.79	0.80	0.72
12	Canada	0.80	0.82	0.82	0.80	0.82	0.90	0.80	0.70	0.73
13	Australia	0.79	0.81	0.81	0.80	0.78	0.87	0.81	0.74	0.72
14	Belgium	0.79	0.83	0.80	0.78	0.84	0.81	0.81	0.76	0.70
15	Japan	0.79	0.72	0.82	0.70	0.78	0.92	0.79	0.77	0.77
16	United Kingdom	0.79	0.81	0.82	0.79	0.80	0.83	0.80	0.71	0.71
17	Singapore	0.78	0.67	0.91	0.63	0.67	0.93	0.86	0.80	0.78
18	Lithuania	0.75	0.75	0.69	0.73	0.75	0.89	0.74	0.78	0.68
19	Hong Kong	0.75	0.61	0.85	0.73	0.61	0.93	0.81	0.75	0.71
20	South Korea	0.74	0.71	0.67	0.71	0.75	0.83	0.74	0.77	0.71
21	Spain	0.73	0.73	0.74	0.70	0.80	0.82	0.71	0.67	0.67
22	Czech Republic	0.73	0.72	0.65	0.68	0.79	0.89	0.71	0.67	0.71
23	France	0.72	0.72	0.74	0.76	0.71	0.76	0.76	0.70	0.61
24	Latvia	0.71	0.70	0.66	0.74	0.75	0.83	0.71	0.66	0.65
25	Uruguay	0.71	0.76	0.73	0.72	0.79	0.70	0.71	0.73	0.56
26	Portugal	0.70	0.78	0.72	0.66	0.77	0.79	0.61	0.68	0.59
27	United States	0.69	0.68	0.72	0.75	0.66	0.81	0.71	0.62	0.60
28	Cyprus	0.68	0.66	0.68	0.61	0.72	0.81	0.65	0.63	0.70
29	Slovenia	0.68	0.65	0.66	0.65	0.76	0.90	0.65	0.65	0.55
30	Malta	0.68	0.65	0.68	0.63	0.73	0.92	0.58	0.61	0.63
31	Costa Rica	0.68	0.76	0.65	0.70	0.78	0.69	0.67	0.60	0.57
32	Chile	0.66	0.72	0.69	0.70	0.72	0.67	0.64	0.63	0.55
33	Slovakia	0.66	0.68	0.51	0.69	0.73	0.90	0.65	0.57	0.57
34	Italy	0.66	0.71	0.64	0.63	0.73	0.75	0.61	0.56	0.64
35	Barbados	0.65	0.64	0.69	0.53	0.73	0.78	0.62	0.64	0.58
36	Poland	0.64	0.54	0.72	0.59	0.61	0.86	0.61	0.61	0.58
37	United Arab Emirates	0.64	0.56	0.80	0.35	0.45	0.91	0.71	0.66	0.67
38	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	0.64	0.60	0.69	0.52	0.71	0.76	0.55	0.63	0.62
39	Antigua and Barbuda	0.63	0.61	0.59	0.54	0.70	0.78	0.63	0.68	0.53
40	Saint Kitts and Nevis	0.63	0.61	0.65	0.45	0.70	0.77	0.61	0.67	0.59
41	Romania	0.63	0.61	0.55	0.62	0.67	0.83	0.58	0.63	0.53
42	Rwanda	0.62	0.62	0.65	0.59	0.50	0.82	0.59	0.66	0.53
43	Saint Lucia	0.62	0.59	0.63	0.48	0.67	0.75	0.59	0.69	0.54
44	Namibia	0.62	0.67	0.52	0.58	0.65	0.75	0.59	0.64	0.55
45	Mauritius	0.61	0.59	0.58	0.52	0.63	0.76	0.62	0.63	0.54
46	Croatia	0.61	0.56	0.56	0.60	0.67	0.85	0.57	0.57	0.49
47	Bahamas	0.61	0.62	0.64	0.52	0.68	0.74	0.50	0.57	0.60
48	Greece	0.61	0.68	0.56	0.61	0.65	0.71	0.57	0.60	0.50
49	Georgia	0.61	0.54	0.68	0.59	0.63	0.79	0.56	0.54	0.53
50	Grenada	0.59	0.57	0.66	0.44	0.63	0.77	0.56	0.61	0.50
51	Botswana	0.59	0.60	0.58	0.48	0.58	0.71	0.60	0.60	0.58
52	South Africa	0.58	0.63	0.48	0.63	0.64	0.61	0.55	0.61	0.52
53	Dominica	0.58	0.53	0.60	0.50	0.62	0.74	0.53	0.56	0.56
54	Malaysia	0.57	0.57	0.58	0.41	0.51	0.78	0.57	0.64	0.55
55	Jamaica	0.57	0.64	0.55	0.56	0.63	0.63	0.55	0.53	0.48
56	Argentina	0.56	0.57	0.48	0.62	0.69	0.62	0.50	0.57	0.42
57	Senegal	0.55	0.57	0.54	0.43	0.60	0.71	0.55	0.56	0.47
58	Ghana	0.55	0.66	0.39	0.49	0.58	0.72	0.54	0.57	0.46
59	Jordan	0.55	0.46	0.59	0.40	0.48	0.76	0.55	0.61	0.56
60	Kosovo	0.55	0.53	0.46	0.55	0.59	0.82	0.47	0.48	0.47
61	Mongolia	0.54	0.54	0.43	0.50	0.58	0.76	0.50	0.55	0.49
62	Bulgaria	0.54	0.46	0.44	0.56	0.60	0.77	0.52	0.54	0.44
63	Trinidad and Tobago	0.53	0.56	0.49	0.56	0.59	0.66	0.51	0.58	0.32
64	North Macedonia	0.53	0.47	0.45	0.50	0.59	0.79	0.47	0.53	0.45
65	Tunisia	0.53	0.60	0.48	0.50	0.55	0.67	0.52	0.50	0.42
66	Kazakhstan	0.52	0.43	0.49	0.46	0.45	0.79	0.52	0.62	0.45
67	Malawi	0.52	0.58	0.43	0.45	0.58	0.69	0.47	0.56	0.44
68	Indonesia	0.52	0.67	0.40	0.54	0.51	0.68	0.55	0.45	0.38
69	Hungary	0.52	0.39	0.49	0.44	0.56	0.90	0.46	0.45	0.46
70	Nepal	0.52	0.59	0.41	0.52	0.51	0.73	0.51	0.46	0.44
71	Panama	0.52	0.53	0.41	0.58	0.63	0.67	0.51	0.47	0.33
72	Bosnia and Herzegovina	0.52	0.45	0.42	0.47	0.59	0.78	0.48	0.47	0.46
73	Moldova	0.51	0.47	0.36	0.57	0.56	0.81	0.45	0.50	0.39
74	Ukraine	0.51	0.47	0.33	0.57	0.61	0.75	0.44	0.54	0.37
75	Burkina Faso	0.50	0.57	0.43	0.48	0.56	0.56	0.49	0.46	0.49
76	Sri Lanka	0.50	0.54	0.49	0.52	0.53	0.56	0.50	0.45	0.43
77	Brazil	0.50	0.51	0.43	0.60	0.48	0.64	0.49	0.52	0.33
78	Guyana	0.50	0.54	0.45	0.44	0.56	0.63	0.45	0.53	0.40
79	India	0.50	0.59	0.40	0.60	0.49	0.60	0.48	0.44	0.39
80	Thailand	0.50	0.46	0.47	0.49	0.47	0.71	0.46	0.48	0.43
81	Serbia	0.49	0.38	0.43	0.46	0.56	0.77	0.47	0.50	0.39
82	Algeria	0.49	0.48	0.45	0.35	0.45	0.75	0.48	0.55	0.43
83	Albania	0.49	0.43	0.37	0.47	0.58	0.78	0.43	0.47	0.40
84	Suriname	0.49	0.48	0.44	0.38	0.53	0.64	0.45	0.48	0.52
85	Uzbekistan	0.49	0.38	0.46	0.37	0.44	0.90	0.44	0.50	0.45
86	Colombia	0.49	0.53	0.39	0.62	0.51	0.56	0.52	0.47	0.32
87	Peru	0.49	0.60	0.32	0.54	0.61	0.61	0.48	0.43	0.32
88	Vietnam	0.49	0.45	0.41	0.46	0.45	0.77	0.44	0.46	0.46
89	The Gambia	0.49	0.59	0.47	0.37	0.52	0.70	0.37	0.50	0.39
90	Morocco	0.49	0.51	0.42	0.43	0.43	0.68	0.53	0.53	0.36
91	Benin	0.49	0.50	0.38	0.39	0.53	0.77	0.48	0.42	0.42
92	Ecuador	0.48	0.50	0.41	0.51	0.52	0.62	0.48	0.49	0.36
93	Belize	0.48	0.44	0.43	0.44	0.51	0.70	0.41	0.52	0.37
94	Dominican Republic	0.48	0.47	0.39	0.53	0.57	0.64	0.41	0.44	0.36
95	El Salvador	0.48	0.47	0.36	0.51	0.50	0.67	0.50	0.50	0.30
96	Paraguay	0.48	0.49	0.30	0.58	0.53	0.71	0.47	0.44	0.28
97	Belarus	0.48	0.27	0.51	0.33	0.41	0.80	0.46	0.57	0.43
98	China	0.47	0.31	0.53	0.38	0.27	0.81	0.49	0.52	0.45
99	Kyrgyzstan	0.47	0.45	0.30	0.52	0.48	0.76	0.43	0.47	0.32
100	Tanzania	0.47	0.51	0.42	0.37	0.43	0.69	0.44	0.48	0.38
101	Russia	0.46	0.35	0.42	0.49	0.42	0.70	0.48	0.53	0.31
102	Philippines	0.46	0.48	0.44	0.50	0.39	0.63	0.48	0.45	0.31
103	Togo	0.45	0.36	0.43	0.30	0.46	0.74	0.49	0.49	0.36
104	Lebanon	0.45	0.49	0.36	0.42	0.47	0.64	0.44	0.42	0.35
105	Côte d'Ivoire	0.45	0.38	0.35	0.37	0.45	0.68	0.50	0.50	0.36
106	Kenya	0.44	0.48	0.27	0.49	0.47	0.55	0.43	0.47	0.39
107	Zambia	0.44	0.43	0.36	0.38	0.41	0.68	0.43	0.46	0.40
108	Sierra Leone	0.44	0.49	0.36	0.38	0.51	0.67	0.36	0.42	0.36
109	Guatemala	0.44	0.52	0.33	0.51	0.53	0.59	0.42	0.36	0.29
110	Liberia	0.44	0.50	0.31	0.44	0.51	0.60	0.42	0.43	0.31
111	Niger	0.44	0.39	0.40	0.36	0.48	0.62	0.47	0.45	0.37
112	Madagascar	0.44	0.44	0.27	0.46	0.46	0.71	0.38	0.45	0.33
113	Mexico	0.43	0.45	0.26	0.60	0.49	0.53	0.44	0.37	0.29
114	Angola	0.43	0.43	0.44	0.39	0.39	0.57	0.43	0.44	0.35
115	Mali	0.43	0.45	0.32	0.45	0.51	0.48	0.48	0.42	0.29
116	Sudan	0.42	0.45	0.40	0.40	0.38	0.64	0.36	0.40	0.37
117	Turkey	0.42	0.28	0.46	0.40	0.31	0.70	0.41	0.43	0.36
118	Republic of Congo	0.42	0.38	0.31	0.36	0.40	0.63	0.48	0.44	0.35
119	Iran	0.42	0.35	0.40	0.28	0.22	0.74	0.45	0.54	0.36
120	Guinea	0.41	0.38	0.27	0.36	0.49	0.72	0.36	0.41	0.31
121	Nigeria	0.41	0.50	0.32	0.42	0.43	0.34	0.43	0.48	0.40
122	Ethiopia	0.41	0.38	0.46	0.33	0.33	0.61	0.38	0.43	0.35
123	Mozambique	0.40	0.42	0.36	0.37	0.41	0.49	0.40	0.44	0.32
124	Bangladesh	0.40	0.37	0.35	0.42	0.31	0.63	0.40	0.38	0.32
125	Uganda	0.39	0.40	0.26	0.38	0.36	0.59	0.42	0.41	0.32
126	Honduras	0.39	0.33	0.31	0.42	0.41	0.65	0.37	0.40	0.25
127	Zimbabwe	0.39	0.33	0.31	0.32	0.34	0.67	0.35	0.46	0.37
128	Myanmar	0.39	0.39	0.44	0.36	0.27	0.64	0.45	0.35	0.26
129	Bolivia	0.39	0.37	0.27	0.43	0.47	0.59	0.41	0.33	0.22
130	Pakistan	0.39	0.47	0.31	0.42	0.38	0.37	0.39	0.40	0.35
131	Nicaragua	0.38	0.25	0.32	0.38	0.34	0.71	0.39	0.36	0.28
132	Haiti	0.38	0.39	0.28	0.38	0.43	0.53	0.31	0.41	0.28
133	Mauritania	0.36	0.34	0.30	0.29	0.40	0.64	0.28	0.39	0.29
134	Afghanistan	0.35	0.42	0.30	0.39	0.40	0.30	0.36	0.35	0.31
135	Cameroon	0.35	0.36	0.25	0.32	0.36	0.48	0.40	0.39	0.25
136	Egypt	0.35	0.24	0.38	0.22	0.24	0.63	0.36	0.37	0.34
137	Democratic Republic of the Congo	0.35	0.40	0.16	0.33	0.41	0.48	0.35	0.36	0.27
138	Cambodia	0.32	0.28	0.23	0.26	0.33	0.67	0.27	0.25	0.25
139	Venezuela	0.27	0.17	0.29	0.28	0.29	0.50	0.19	0.27	0.12

European Results

2021 Rule of Law Index (European Countries). Data Source: World Justice Project (WJP)

Pos.	Country	Overall Score	Constraints on Goverment Powers	Absense of Corruption	Open Government	Fundamental Rights	Order and Security	Regulatory Enforcement	Civil Justice	Criminal Justice
1	Denmark	0.90	0.94	0.95	0.87	0.92	0.92	0.89	0.86	0.83
2	Norway	0.90	0.94	0.94	0.89	0.91	0.93	0.88	0.85	0.85
3	Finland	0.88	0.92	0.89	0.87	0.90	0.92	0.87	0.82	0.84
4	Sweden	0.86	0.87	0.90	0.86	0.87	0.92	0.84	0.83	0.80
5	Germany	0.84	0.86	0.83	0.80	0.85	0.89	0.86	0.84	0.79
6	Netherlands	0.83	0.85	0.87	0.82	0.84	0.85	0.85	0.83	0.75
7	Luxembourg	0.83	0.82	0.87	0.79	0.85	0.93	0.85	0.79	0.73
8	Austria	0.81	0.85	0.82	0.70	0.85	0.91	0.82	0.75	0.80
9	Ireland	0.81	0.82	0.80	0.80	0.82	0.94	0.81	0.74	0.72
10	Estonia	0.81	0.83	0.80	0.80	0.82	0.89	0.79	0.80	0.72
11	Belgium	0.79	0.83	0.80	0.78	0.84	0.81	0.81	0.76	0.70
12	United Kingdom	0.79	0.81	0.82	0.79	0.80	0.83	0.80	0.71	0.71
13	Lithuania	0.75	0.75	0.69	0.73	0.75	0.89	0.74	0.78	0.68
14	Spain	0.73	0.73	0.74	0.70	0.80	0.82	0.71	0.67	0.67
15	Czech Republic	0.73	0.72	0.65	0.68	0.79	0.89	0.71	0.67	0.71
16	France	0.72	0.72	0.74	0.76	0.71	0.76	0.76	0.70	0.61
17	Latvia	0.71	0.70	0.66	0.74	0.75	0.83	0.71	0.66	0.65
18	Portugal	0.70	0.78	0.72	0.66	0.77	0.79	0.61	0.68	0.59
19	Slovenia	0.68	0.65	0.66	0.65	0.76	0.90	0.65	0.65	0.55
20	Malta	0.68	0.65	0.68	0.63	0.73	0.92	0.58	0.61	0.63
21	Slovakia	0.66	0.68	0.51	0.69	0.73	0.90	0.65	0.57	0.57
22	Italy	0.66	0.71	0.64	0.63	0.73	0.75	0.61	0.56	0.64
23	Poland	0.64	0.54	0.72	0.59	0.61	0.86	0.61	0.61	0.58
24	Romania	0.63	0.61	0.55	0.62	0.67	0.83	0.58	0.63	0.53
25	Croatia	0.61	0.56	0.56	0.60	0.67	0.85	0.57	0.57	0.49
26	Greece	0.61	0.68	0.56	0.61	0.65	0.71	0.57	0.60	0.50
27	Bulgaria	0.54	0.46	0.44	0.56	0.60	0.77	0.52	0.54	0.44
28	North Macedonia	0.53	0.47	0.45	0.50	0.59	0.79	0.47	0.53	0.45
29	Hungary	0.52	0.39	0.49	0.44	0.56	0.90	0.46	0.45	0.46
30	Bosnia and Herzegovina	0.52	0.45	0.42	0.47	0.59	0.78	0.48	0.47	0.46
31	Moldova	0.51	0.47	0.36	0.57	0.56	0.81	0.45	0.50	0.39
32	Ukraine	0.51	0.47	0.33	0.57	0.61	0.75	0.44	0.54	0.37
33	Serbia	0.49	0.38	0.43	0.46	0.56	0.77	0.47	0.50	0.39
34	Albania	0.49	0.43	0.37	0.47	0.58	0.78	0.43	0.47	0.40
35	Belarus	0.48	0.27	0.51	0.33	0.41	0.80	0.46	0.57	0.43
36	Russia	0.46	0.35	0.42	0.49	0.42	0.70	0.48	0.53	0.31

Aggregations

Notes

Unsurprisingly at the top of the list of the Rule of Law Index for 2021 are the four Scandinavian countries that we saw in the previous indices. It is also worth mentioning New Zealand and Ireland with good rankings in all three indices examined so far.

In addition to most European Countries scoring a high place, other notable high rankings are South Korea and Japan in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand in Oceania, Canada and the United States in North America, Guyane française, Uruguay and Chile in South America, and Costa Rica in Central America. All of those countries have consistently good rankings in all the indices we have checked so far.

In Africa, several countries have no score, with the rest receiving a low position except for the three countries of the South, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, and Ghana, Guinea Bissau in Central Africa.

Greece ranks 48th out of 139 countries surveyed and 26th in Europe out of 36 countries. Worse than all the countries in the European Union, only surpasses Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine, most Balkan countries, and of course Belarus and Russia which are consistently in the last position in Europe.

Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International

Who published it?

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is published annually since 1995 by Transparency International, a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, Transparency International is a non-profit, non-governmental organization purposed to combat global corruption and prevent criminal activities arising from it.

Score Methodology

CPI ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be, determined by at least 3 data sources drawn from 13 different corruption surveys and assessments. These data sources are collected by a variety of institutions, including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. CPI has received criticism over the years firstly due to the difficulty in measuring corruption, which, by definition, happens behind the scenes, and secondly, the need to rely on third-party surveys to compile the index. Note that one of those data sources is the WJP Rule of Law Index we examined previously.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories around the world and the results are given on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

If you want to learn more about Transparency International you can visit their site https://www.transparency.org. You can read more about the scoring methodology here and, you can download the data CPI (2021) by Transparency International Note that the latest data available are from 2021.

Data Preparation

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 180 entries, 0 to 179
Data columns (total 22 columns):
 #   Column                                               Non-Null Count  Dtype  
---  ------                                               --------------  -----  
 0   Country / Territory                                  180 non-null    object 
 1   ISO3                                                 180 non-null    object 
 2   Region                                               180 non-null    object 
 3   CPI score 2021                                       180 non-null    int64  
 4   Rank                                                 180 non-null    int64  
 5   Standard error                                       180 non-null    float64
 6   Number of sources                                    180 non-null    int64  
 7   Lower CI                                             180 non-null    float64
 8   Upper CI                                             180 non-null    float64
 9   African Development Bank CPIA                        37 non-null     float64
 10  Bertelsmann Foundation Sustainable Governance Index  41 non-null     float64
 11  Bertelsmann Foundation Transformation Index          137 non-null    float64
 12  Economist Intelligence Unit Country Ratings          131 non-null    float64
 13  Freedom House Nations in Transit                     29 non-null     float64
 14  Global Insights Country Risk Ratings                 180 non-null    int64  
 15  IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook                   64 non-null     float64
 16  PERC Asia Risk Guide                                 15 non-null     float64
 17  PRS International Country Risk Guide                 139 non-null    float64
 18  Varieties of Democracy Project                       175 non-null    float64
 19  World Bank CPIA                                      67 non-null     float64
 20  World Economic Forum EOS                             130 non-null    float64
 21  World Justice Project Rule of Law Index              136 non-null    float64
dtypes: float64(15), int64(4), object(3)
memory usage: 31.1+ KB

	Country / Territory	ISO3	Region	CPI score 2021	Rank	Standard error	Number of sources	Lower CI	Upper CI	African Development Bank CPIA	...	Economist Intelligence Unit Country Ratings	Freedom House Nations in Transit	Global Insights Country Risk Ratings	IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook	PERC Asia Risk Guide	PRS International Country Risk Guide	Varieties of Democracy Project	World Bank CPIA	World Economic Forum EOS	World Justice Project Rule of Law Index
0	Denmark	DNK	WE/EU	88	1	1.850507	8	84.95592	91.04408	NaN	...	90.0	NaN	83	93.0	NaN	100.0	79.0	NaN	78.0	87.0
1	Finland	FIN	WE/EU	88	1	1.248280	8	85.94658	90.05342	NaN	...	90.0	NaN	83	94.0	NaN	93.0	77.0	NaN	91.0	87.0
2	New Zealand	NZL	AP	88	1	1.427644	8	85.65153	90.34847	NaN	...	90.0	NaN	83	91.0	NaN	93.0	78.0	NaN	85.0	83.0
3	Norway	NOR	WE/EU	85	4	1.072085	7	83.23642	86.76358	NaN	...	90.0	NaN	83	81.0	NaN	85.0	78.0	NaN	NaN	87.0
4	Singapore	SGP	AP	85	4	1.159654	9	83.09237	86.90763	NaN	...	90.0	NaN	83	87.0	91.0	85.0	78.0	NaN	91.0	84.0

5 rows × 22 columns

Similar country names:  15
{'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo': ['Republic of Congo', 'Tonga'],
 "Cote d'Ivoire": ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Cape Verde'],
 'Czechia': ['Czech Republic'],
 'Eswatini': ['Palestine', 'Swaziland'],
 'Gambia': ['The Gambia', 'Guam'],
 'Guinea Bissau': ['Guinea-Bissau', 'Nauru'],
 'Korea, North': ['North Korea', 'South Korea'],
 'Korea, South': ['South Korea', 'North Korea'],
 'Laos': ['Lao PDR'],
 'Maldives': [],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'Sao Tome and Principe': ['São Tomé and Principe', 'San Marino'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'United States of America': ['United States', 'Isle of Man']}

Table and Visualizations

Worldwide Results

2021 Corruption Perceptions Index. Data Source: Transparency International

Pos.	Country	CPI Score
1	Denmark	88
1	Finland	88
1	New Zealand	88
4	Norway	85
4	Singapore	85
4	Sweden	85
7	Switzerland	84
8	Netherlands	82
9	Luxembourg	81
10	Germany	80
11	United Kingdom	78
12	Hong Kong	76
13	Canada	74
13	Iceland	74
13	Ireland	74
13	Estonia	74
13	Austria	74
18	Australia	73
18	Belgium	73
18	Japan	73
18	Uruguay	73
22	France	71
23	Seychelles	70
24	United Arab Emirates	69
25	Bhutan	68
25	Taiwan	68
27	Chile	67
27	United States	67
29	Barbados	65
30	Bahamas	64
31	Qatar	63
32	South Korea	62
32	Portugal	62
34	Lithuania	61
34	Spain	61
36	Israel	59
36	Latvia	59
36	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	59
39	Cape Verde	58
39	Costa Rica	58
41	Slovenia	57
42	Italy	56
42	Poland	56
42	Saint Lucia	56
45	Botswana	55
45	Dominica	55
45	Fiji	55
45	Georgia	55
49	Czech Republic	54
49	Malta	54
49	Mauritius	54
52	Grenada	53
52	Cyprus	53
52	Rwanda	53
52	Saudi Arabia	53
56	Oman	52
56	Slovakia	52
58	Armenia	49
58	Greece	49
58	Jordan	49
58	Namibia	49
62	Malaysia	48
63	Croatia	47
64	Cuba	46
64	Montenegro	46
66	China	45
66	Romania	45
66	São Tomé and Principe	45
66	Vanuatu	45
70	Jamaica	44
70	South Africa	44
70	Tunisia	44
73	Ghana	43
73	Hungary	43
73	Kuwait	43
73	Senegal	43
73	Solomon Islands	43
78	Bahrain	42
78	Benin	42
78	Burkina Faso	42
78	Bulgaria	42
82	Timor-Leste	41
82	Belarus	41
82	Trinidad and Tobago	41
85	India	40
85	Maldives	40
87	Kosovo	39
87	Colombia	39
87	Ethiopia	39
87	Guyana	39
87	Morocco	39
87	North Macedonia	39
87	Suriname	39
87	Tanzania	39
87	Vietnam	39
96	Argentina	38
96	Brazil	38
96	Indonesia	38
96	Lesotho	38
96	Serbia	38
96	Turkey	38
102	The Gambia	37
102	Kazakhstan	37
102	Sri Lanka	37
105	Côte d'Ivoire	36
105	Ecuador	36
105	Moldova	36
105	Panama	36
105	Peru	36
110	Albania	35
110	Bosnia and Herzegovina	35
110	Malawi	35
110	Mongolia	35
110	Thailand	35
115	El Salvador	34
115	Sierra Leone	34
117	Egypt	33
117	Nepal	33
117	Philippines	33
117	Zambia	33
117	Algeria	33
122	Swaziland	32
122	Ukraine	32
124	Gabon	31
124	Mexico	31
124	Niger	31
124	Papua New Guinea	31
128	Azerbaijan	30
128	Bolivia	30
128	Djibouti	30
128	Dominican Republic	30
128	Lao PDR	30
128	Paraguay	30
128	Togo	30
128	Kenya	30
136	Angola	29
136	Liberia	29
136	Mali	29
136	Russia	29
140	Mauritania	28
140	Myanmar	28
140	Pakistan	28
140	Uzbekistan	28
144	Cameroon	27
144	Kyrgyzstan	27
144	Uganda	27
147	Bangladesh	26
147	Madagascar	26
147	Mozambique	26
150	Guatemala	25
150	Guinea	25
150	Iran	25
150	Tajikistan	25
154	Lebanon	24
154	Nigeria	24
154	Central African Republic	24
157	Cambodia	23
157	Honduras	23
157	Iraq	23
157	Zimbabwe	23
161	Eritrea	22
162	Republic of Congo	21
162	Guinea-Bissau	21
164	Chad	20
164	Comoros	20
164	Haiti	20
164	Nicaragua	20
164	Sudan	20
169	Burundi	19
169	Democratic Republic of the Congo	19
169	Turkmenistan	19
172	Equatorial Guinea	17
172	Libya	17
174	Afghanistan	16
174	North Korea	16
174	Yemen	16
177	Venezuela	14
178	Somalia	13
178	Syria	13
180	South Sudan	11

European Results

2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (European Countries). Data Source: Transparency International

Pos.	Country	CPI Score
1	Denmark	88
1	Finland	88
3	Norway	85
3	Sweden	85
5	Switzerland	84
6	Netherlands	82
7	Luxembourg	81
8	Germany	80
9	United Kingdom	78
11	Austria	74
11	Estonia	74
11	Iceland	74
11	Ireland	74
14	Belgium	73
15	France	71
16	Portugal	62
17	Spain	61
17	Lithuania	61
19	Latvia	59
20	Slovenia	57
21	Italy	56
21	Poland	56
23	Czech Republic	54
23	Malta	54
25	Slovakia	52
26	Greece	49
27	Croatia	47
28	Montenegro	46
29	Romania	45
30	Hungary	43
31	Bulgaria	42
32	Belarus	41
33	North Macedonia	39
34	Serbia	38
35	Moldova	36
36	Albania	35
36	Bosnia and Herzegovina	35
38	Ukraine	32
39	Russia	29

Aggregations

Notes

The same 4 Nordic countries top the CPI index along with New Zealand and Singapore. The rest countries in the top ten are all European, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany. All countries have been ranked well in the previous indicators as well. Contrary to the indices examined above, the majority of Eastern European countries receive a medium to a low score. More than two-thirds of the 180 countries included in the CPI have a score under 50, with an average corruption score of just 43.

The same applies for the American continent. The only countries with a positive score are Canada and the USA in the North, Costa Rica in Central America and Chile, French Guinea, and Uruguay in the South. In the worst ranking are the African countries with Botswana receiving the best score (55) in 45th place.

Greece takes 58th place out of 180 countries worldwide and 26th place out of 39 European countries. As in previous indices, it is in a better position than most of the Balkan countries and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is below the rest of the European Union countries in its best rank so far.

Human Development Index by HDRO

Who published it?

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development. It was first developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and later was used by the United Nations to measure a country's development. Nowadays it is compiled by the Human Development Report Office as part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). UNDP is an agency tasked with helping countries achieve economic growth and human development with offices in 170 countries. You can read more in their site https://hdr.undp.org

Scoring Methodology

The HDI is the geometric mean of three normalized indices:

• Life expectancy index which assesed by life expectancy at birth
• Education index which measured by the mean years of schooling for adults aged 25 years or more and the expected years of schooling for children on school entering age
• The GNI index measured by the logarithm of gross national income (GNI) per capita

HDI does not take into account factors like inequalities, poverty, and human security. From 2010 Human Development report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). IHDI is based on a distribution-sensitive class of composite indices proposed by Foster, Lopez-Calva and Szekely (2005). The same three base indices (Life expectancy, Education and Income) are adjusted ("discounted") for inequalities on each country's population (coefficient of human inequality). The IHDI again is computed as a geometric mean of these inequality-adjusted indices. In this sense, HDI is the potential maximum level of human development that could achieved by each Country if there was no inquality.

Latest Human Development evaluates the development of 189 countries from 0 to 1 (1 = most developed). Inequality-adjusted HDI ranks 152 countries in the same scale.

You can find more information about the HDI index and its methodology here and IHDI here

Data Preparation

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
Int64Index: 189 entries, 0 to 191
Data columns (total 13 columns):
 #   Column                                     Non-Null Count  Dtype  
---  ------                                     --------------  -----  
 0   Pos.                                       189 non-null    int64  
 1   Country                                    189 non-null    object 
 2   HDI                                        189 non-null    float64
 3   IHDI                                       152 non-null    float64
 4   IHDI overall loss %                        152 non-null    float64
 5   HDI rank difference                        152 non-null    float64
 6   Coefficient of human inequality            152 non-null    float64
 7   Inequality in life expectancy %            183 non-null    float64
 8   Inequality-adjusted life expectancy index  183 non-null    float64
 9   Inequality in education %                  171 non-null    float64
 10  Inequality-adjusted education index        171 non-null    float64
 11  Inequality in income %                     156 non-null    float64
 12  Inequality-adjusted income index           156 non-null    float64
dtypes: float64(11), int64(1), object(1)
memory usage: 20.7+ KB

	Pos.	Country	HDI	IHDI	IHDI overall loss %	HDI rank difference	Coefficient of human inequality	Inequality in life expectancy %	Inequality-adjusted life expectancy index	Inequality in education %	Inequality-adjusted education index	Inequality in income %	Inequality-adjusted income index
0	1	Norway	0.96	0.90	6.06	0.0	5.96	3.0	0.93	2.33	0.91	12.56	0.86
1	2	Ireland	0.96	0.88	7.33	-3.0	7.22	3.4	0.93	3.29	0.89	14.98	0.84
2	2	Switzerland	0.96	0.89	6.91	-1.0	6.75	3.5	0.95	1.83	0.88	14.93	0.84
3	4	Hong Kong, China (SAR)	0.95	0.82	13.17	-17.0	12.63	2.5	0.97	9.80	0.79	25.60	0.72
4	4	Iceland	0.95	0.89	5.80	2.0	5.64	2.4	0.95	2.79	0.90	11.74	0.84

Similar country names:  23
{'Bolivia (Plurinational State of)': ['Bolivia', 'Isle of Man'],
 'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Republic of Congo'],
 'Congo (Democratic Republic of the)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo',
                                        'Isle of Man'],
 'Czechia': ['Czech Republic'],
 'Eswatini (Kingdom of)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Isle of Man'],
 'Gambia': ['The Gambia', 'Guam'],
 'Hong Kong, China (SAR)': ['Hong Kong'],
 'Iran (Islamic Republic of)': ['Iran', 'Isle of Man'],
 'Korea (Republic of)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'North Korea'],
 "Lao People's Democratic Republic": ['Czech Republic', 'Republic of Congo'],
 'Maldives': ['Moldova', 'Somalia'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'Micronesia (Federated States of)': ['Federated States of Micronesia',
                                      'Isle of Man'],
 'Moldova (Republic of)': ['Moldova', 'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Palestine, State of': ['Palestine', 'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Russian Federation': ['Russia', 'Iran'],
 'Sao Tome and Principe': ['São Tomé and Principe', 'San Marino'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'Syrian Arab Republic': ['Syria', 'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Tanzania (United Republic of)': ['Tanzania', 'Isle of Man'],
 'Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)': ['Venezuela', 'Isle of Man'],
 'Viet Nam': ['Vietnam']}

Table and Visualizations

Worldwide Results

2020 Human Development Index. Data Source: UN Human Development Report Office

Pos.	Country	HDI	IHDI	Coefficient of human inequality	Inequality-adjusted life expectancy index	Inequality-adjusted education index	Inequality-adjusted income index
1	Norway	0.96	0.90	5.96	0.93	0.91	0.86
2	Ireland	0.96	0.88	7.22	0.93	0.89	0.84
2	Switzerland	0.96	0.89	6.75	0.95	0.88	0.84
4	Hong Kong	0.95	0.82	12.63	0.97	0.79	0.72
4	Iceland	0.95	0.89	5.64	0.95	0.90	0.84
6	Germany	0.95	0.87	7.91	0.91	0.92	0.79
7	Sweden	0.94	0.88	6.52	0.94	0.88	0.83
8	Australia	0.94	0.87	7.90	0.94	0.90	0.77
8	Netherlands	0.94	0.88	6.90	0.93	0.86	0.84
10	Denmark	0.94	0.88	5.96	0.90	0.89	0.85
11	Finland	0.94	0.89	5.29	0.92	0.91	0.83
11	Singapore	0.94	0.81	12.83	0.95	0.75	0.75
13	United Kingdom	0.93	0.86	7.95	0.90	0.90	0.77
14	Belgium	0.93	0.86	7.72	0.91	0.83	0.84
14	New Zealand	0.93	0.86	7.51	0.92	0.91	0.76
16	Canada	0.93	0.85	8.44	0.92	0.87	0.77
17	United States	0.93	0.81	12.07	0.85	0.88	0.71
18	Austria	0.92	0.86	6.91	0.91	0.84	0.82
19	Israel	0.92	0.81	10.88	0.94	0.83	0.69
19	Japan	0.92	0.84	8.07	0.97	0.81	0.76
19	Liechtenstein	0.92	-	-	-	-	-
22	Slovenia	0.92	0.88	4.57	0.92	0.89	0.82
23	South Korea	0.92	0.82	10.69	0.94	0.79	0.73
23	Luxembourg	0.92	0.83	9.56	0.93	0.76	0.81
25	Spain	0.90	0.78	13.11	0.95	0.69	0.73
26	France	0.90	0.82	8.93	0.93	0.74	0.80
27	Czech Republic	0.90	0.86	4.42	0.89	0.88	0.82
28	Malta	0.90	0.82	7.93	0.92	0.77	0.79
29	Estonia	0.89	0.83	6.89	0.87	0.86	0.76
29	Italy	0.89	0.78	11.82	0.95	0.71	0.72
31	United Arab Emirates	0.89	-	-	0.85	0.66	-
32	Greece	0.89	0.79	10.79	0.92	0.76	0.71
33	Cyprus	0.89	0.80	9.10	0.90	0.74	0.78
34	Lithuania	0.88	0.79	9.98	0.81	0.86	0.71
35	Poland	0.88	0.81	7.57	0.86	0.83	0.75
36	Andorra	0.87	-	-	-	0.65	-
37	Latvia	0.87	0.78	9.17	0.80	0.86	0.69
38	Portugal	0.86	0.76	11.80	0.92	0.65	0.73
39	Slovakia	0.86	0.81	6.08	0.84	0.81	0.77
40	Hungary	0.85	0.79	7.26	0.84	0.80	0.74
40	Saudi Arabia	0.85	-	-	0.79	0.65	-
42	Bahrain	0.85	-	-	0.83	0.59	-
43	Chile	0.85	0.71	15.94	0.87	0.73	0.57
43	Croatia	0.85	0.78	7.88	0.86	0.77	0.73
45	Qatar	0.85	-	-	0.87	0.58	-
46	Argentina	0.84	0.73	13.24	0.80	0.80	0.61
47	Brunei Darussalam	0.84	-	-	0.79	-	-
48	Montenegro	0.83	0.75	9.45	0.84	0.74	0.67
49	Romania	0.83	0.73	11.45	0.81	0.72	0.66
50	Palau	0.83	-	-	-	0.84	-
51	Kazakhstan	0.82	0.77	7.07	0.76	0.80	0.74
52	Russia	0.82	0.74	10.02	0.75	0.79	0.68
53	Belarus	0.82	0.77	6.30	0.81	0.81	0.70
54	Turkey	0.82	0.68	16.53	0.81	0.61	0.64
55	Uruguay	0.82	0.71	12.59	0.82	0.72	0.61
56	Bulgaria	0.82	0.72	11.33	0.80	0.73	0.64
57	Panama	0.82	0.64	20.09	0.79	0.62	0.54
58	Bahamas	0.81	-	-	0.77	0.69	-
58	Barbados	0.81	0.68	15.93	0.83	0.74	0.50
60	Oman	0.81	0.71	12.92	0.83	0.63	0.67
61	Georgia	0.81	0.72	11.52	0.76	0.83	0.58
62	Costa Rica	0.81	0.66	17.54	0.86	0.64	0.52
62	Malaysia	0.81	-	-	0.81	0.64	-
64	Kuwait	0.81	-	-	0.80	0.50	-
64	Serbia	0.81	0.70	12.11	0.82	0.72	0.59
66	Mauritius	0.80	0.69	13.60	0.77	0.64	0.68
67	Seychelles	0.80	0.67	15.19	0.74	0.68	0.60
67	Trinidad and Tobago	0.80	-	-	0.70	-	-
69	Albania	0.80	0.71	10.89	0.84	0.65	0.65
70	Cuba	0.78	-	-	0.86	0.73	-
70	Iran	0.78	0.69	11.30	0.79	0.72	0.59
72	Sri Lanka	0.78	0.67	13.79	0.82	0.66	0.57
73	Bosnia and Herzegovina	0.78	0.67	14.20	0.84	0.59	0.60
74	Grenada	0.78	-	-	0.72	-	-
74	Mexico	0.78	0.61	20.76	0.76	0.57	0.53
74	Saint Kitts and Nevis	0.78	-	-	-	-	-
74	Ukraine	0.78	0.73	6.50	0.74	0.77	0.68
78	Antigua and Barbuda	0.78	-	-	0.83	-	-
79	Peru	0.78	0.63	18.78	0.78	0.61	0.52
79	Thailand	0.78	0.65	16.67	0.81	0.56	0.60
81	Armenia	0.78	0.70	9.67	0.77	0.72	0.62
82	North Macedonia	0.77	0.68	11.81	0.79	0.65	0.62
83	Colombia	0.77	0.60	21.61	0.79	0.56	0.48
84	Brazil	0.76	0.57	24.35	0.77	0.55	0.44
85	China	0.76	0.64	15.67	0.81	0.58	0.56
86	Ecuador	0.76	0.62	18.43	0.78	0.60	0.50
86	Saint Lucia	0.76	0.63	16.87	0.77	0.59	0.55
88	Azerbaijan	0.76	0.68	9.37	0.70	0.67	0.68
88	Dominican Republic	0.76	0.60	21.07	0.69	0.56	0.54
90	Moldova	0.75	0.67	10.30	0.72	0.66	0.64
91	Algeria	0.75	0.60	19.73	0.75	0.45	0.63
92	Lebanon	0.74	-	-	0.84	0.57	-
93	Fiji	0.74	-	-	0.62	-	-
94	Dominica	0.74	-	-	-	-	-
95	Maldives	0.74	0.58	20.38	0.85	0.41	0.58
95	Tunisia	0.74	0.60	18.86	0.79	0.46	0.58
97	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	0.74	-	-	0.72	-	-
97	Suriname	0.74	0.54	25.95	0.69	0.55	0.40
99	Mongolia	0.74	0.63	13.98	0.67	0.65	0.59
100	Botswana	0.74	-	-	0.61	0.52	-
101	Jamaica	0.73	0.61	15.87	0.75	0.65	0.47
102	Jordan	0.73	0.62	14.64	0.75	0.56	0.57
103	Paraguay	0.73	0.56	22.77	0.72	0.53	0.45
104	Tonga	0.72	-	-	0.70	0.74	-
105	Libya	0.72	-	-	0.74	-	-
106	Uzbekistan	0.72	-	-	0.69	0.72	-
107	Bolivia	0.72	0.55	23.75	0.61	0.57	0.46
107	Indonesia	0.72	0.59	17.73	0.69	0.55	0.55
107	Philippines	0.72	0.59	17.83	0.67	0.61	0.50
110	Belize	0.72	0.55	21.63	0.75	0.58	0.39
111	Samoa	0.72	-	-	0.74	0.68	-
111	Turkmenistan	0.72	0.59	17.52	0.57	0.63	0.56
113	Venezuela	0.71	0.59	17.03	0.66	0.64	0.48
114	South Africa	0.71	0.47	31.16	0.55	0.60	0.31
115	Palestine	0.71	0.61	13.40	0.73	0.60	0.52
116	Egypt	0.71	0.50	28.73	0.71	0.38	0.45
117	Marshall Islands	0.70	-	-	-	0.68	-
117	Vietnam	0.70	0.59	16.54	0.74	0.52	0.53
119	Gabon	0.70	0.54	22.50	0.55	0.50	0.59
120	Kyrgyzstan	0.70	0.63	9.50	0.70	0.71	0.51
121	Morocco	0.69	-	-	0.76	-	-
122	Guyana	0.68	0.56	18.27	0.62	0.54	0.51
123	Iraq	0.67	0.54	19.43	0.65	0.39	0.62
124	El Salvador	0.67	0.53	21.14	0.72	0.39	0.52
125	Tajikistan	0.67	0.58	12.41	0.65	0.64	0.47
126	Cape Verde	0.66	-	-	0.72	0.43	-
127	Guatemala	0.66	0.48	26.93	0.71	0.36	0.43
128	Nicaragua	0.66	0.50	23.16	0.73	0.43	0.42
129	Bhutan	0.65	0.48	26.27	0.66	0.29	0.57
130	Namibia	0.65	0.42	33.57	0.52	0.44	0.32
131	India	0.64	0.48	25.73	0.61	0.34	0.52
132	Honduras	0.63	0.47	24.82	0.74	0.38	0.37
133	Bangladesh	0.63	0.48	23.72	0.67	0.33	0.49
134	Kiribati	0.63	0.52	17.90	0.56	0.54	0.46
135	São Tomé and Principe	0.62	0.52	16.73	0.64	0.46	0.47
136	Federated States of Micronesia	0.62	-	-	0.62	-	0.41
137	Lao PDR	0.61	0.46	24.73	0.57	0.33	0.52
138	Eswatini (Kingdom of)	0.61	0.43	29.03	0.46	0.42	0.41
138	Ghana	0.61	0.44	27.81	0.51	0.37	0.45
140	Vanuatu	0.61	-	-	0.66	-	0.42
141	Timor-Leste	0.61	0.44	26.73	0.60	0.28	0.50
142	Nepal	0.60	0.45	24.90	0.64	0.31	0.45
143	Kenya	0.60	0.44	26.17	0.56	0.41	0.38
144	Cambodia	0.59	0.48	19.90	0.63	0.35	0.49
145	Equatorial Guinea	0.59	-	-	0.39	-	-
146	Zambia	0.58	0.40	30.59	0.50	0.44	0.29
147	Myanmar	0.58	-	-	0.56	0.34	-
148	Angola	0.58	0.40	31.73	0.43	0.33	0.44
149	Republic of Congo	0.57	0.43	24.90	0.53	0.43	0.35
150	Zimbabwe	0.57	0.44	22.52	0.48	0.50	0.35
151	Solomon Islands	0.57	-	-	0.72	-	0.38
151	Syria	0.57	-	-	0.71	-	-
153	Cameroon	0.56	0.38	33.40	0.40	0.37	0.35
154	Pakistan	0.56	0.38	30.21	0.51	0.23	0.49
155	Papua New Guinea	0.56	0.39	29.55	0.52	0.28	0.40
156	Comoros	0.55	0.30	44.17	0.48	0.25	0.23
157	Mauritania	0.55	0.37	31.80	0.48	0.23	0.45
158	Benin	0.55	0.34	36.87	0.42	0.27	0.36
159	Uganda	0.54	0.40	26.68	0.49	0.38	0.35
160	Rwanda	0.54	0.39	28.40	0.61	0.32	0.29
161	Nigeria	0.54	0.35	35.19	0.34	0.30	0.42
162	Côte d'Ivoire	0.54	0.35	35.32	0.39	0.25	0.43
163	Tanzania	0.53	0.40	24.90	0.52	0.31	0.38
164	Madagascar	0.53	0.39	26.00	0.57	0.34	0.30
165	Lesotho	0.53	0.38	27.41	0.35	0.43	0.37
166	Djibouti	0.52	-	-	0.56	-	0.44
167	Togo	0.52	0.35	31.69	0.44	0.32	0.31
168	Senegal	0.51	0.35	31.15	0.58	0.18	0.39
169	Afghanistan	0.51	-	-	0.49	0.23	-
170	Haiti	0.51	0.30	39.98	0.46	0.29	0.21
170	Sudan	0.51	0.33	34.30	0.51	0.20	0.37
172	The Gambia	0.50	0.34	31.21	0.46	0.21	0.38
173	Ethiopia	0.48	0.35	27.25	0.54	0.19	0.40
174	Malawi	0.48	0.34	28.63	0.51	0.34	0.24
175	Democratic Republic of the Congo	0.48	0.34	30.17	0.40	0.36	0.26
175	Guinea-Bissau	0.48	0.30	37.37	0.40	0.24	0.28
175	Liberia	0.48	0.32	31.80	0.48	0.24	0.30
178	Guinea	0.48	0.31	33.09	0.44	0.18	0.39
179	Yemen	0.47	0.32	30.87	0.53	0.19	0.33
180	Eritrea	0.46	-	-	0.56	-	-
181	Mozambique	0.46	0.32	30.67	0.44	0.26	0.27
182	Burkina Faso	0.45	0.32	29.50	0.43	0.19	0.38
182	Sierra Leone	0.45	0.29	34.55	0.33	0.22	0.35
184	Mali	0.43	0.29	32.37	0.38	0.16	0.39
185	Burundi	0.43	0.30	29.63	0.46	0.25	0.24
185	South Sudan	0.43	0.28	36.03	0.37	0.19	0.31
187	Chad	0.40	0.25	37.43	0.31	0.16	0.30
188	Central African Republic	0.40	0.23	41.27	0.31	0.23	0.18
189	Niger	0.39	0.28	27.43	0.45	0.16	0.31

European Results

2020 Human Development Index (European Countries). Data Source: UN Human Development Report Office

Pos.	Country	HDI	IHDI	Coefficient of human inequality	Inequality-adjusted life expectancy index	Inequality-adjusted education index	Inequality-adjusted income index
2	Norway	0.96	0.90	5.96	0.93	0.91	0.86
2	Ireland	0.96	0.88	7.22	0.93	0.89	0.84
2	Switzerland	0.96	0.89	6.75	0.95	0.88	0.84
4	Iceland	0.95	0.89	5.64	0.95	0.90	0.84
4	Germany	0.95	0.87	7.91	0.91	0.92	0.79
7	Sweden	0.94	0.88	6.52	0.94	0.88	0.83
7	Netherlands	0.94	0.88	6.90	0.93	0.86	0.84
7	Denmark	0.94	0.88	5.96	0.90	0.89	0.85
7	Finland	0.94	0.89	5.29	0.92	0.91	0.83
10	United Kingdom	0.93	0.86	7.95	0.90	0.90	0.77
10	Belgium	0.93	0.86	7.72	0.91	0.83	0.84
13	Austria	0.92	0.86	6.91	0.91	0.84	0.82
13	Liechtenstein	0.92	-	-	-	-	-
13	Slovenia	0.92	0.88	4.57	0.92	0.89	0.82
13	Luxembourg	0.92	0.83	9.56	0.93	0.76	0.81
17	Spain	0.90	0.78	13.11	0.95	0.69	0.73
17	France	0.90	0.82	8.93	0.93	0.74	0.80
17	Czech Republic	0.90	0.86	4.42	0.89	0.88	0.82
17	Malta	0.90	0.82	7.93	0.92	0.77	0.79
21	Estonia	0.89	0.83	6.89	0.87	0.86	0.76
21	Italy	0.89	0.78	11.82	0.95	0.71	0.72
21	Greece	0.89	0.79	10.79	0.92	0.76	0.71
23	Lithuania	0.88	0.79	9.98	0.81	0.86	0.71
23	Poland	0.88	0.81	7.57	0.86	0.83	0.75
25	Andorra	0.87	-	-	-	0.65	-
25	Latvia	0.87	0.78	9.17	0.80	0.86	0.69
27	Portugal	0.86	0.76	11.80	0.92	0.65	0.73
27	Slovakia	0.86	0.81	6.08	0.84	0.81	0.77
29	Hungary	0.85	0.79	7.26	0.84	0.80	0.74
29	Croatia	0.85	0.78	7.88	0.86	0.77	0.73
31	Montenegro	0.83	0.75	9.45	0.84	0.74	0.67
31	Romania	0.83	0.73	11.45	0.81	0.72	0.66
34	Russia	0.82	0.74	10.02	0.75	0.79	0.68
34	Belarus	0.82	0.77	6.30	0.81	0.81	0.70
34	Bulgaria	0.82	0.72	11.33	0.80	0.73	0.64
36	Serbia	0.81	0.70	12.11	0.82	0.72	0.59
37	Albania	0.80	0.71	10.89	0.84	0.65	0.65
38	Bosnia and Herzegovina	0.78	0.67	14.20	0.84	0.59	0.60
38	Ukraine	0.78	0.73	6.50	0.74	0.77	0.68
40	North Macedonia	0.77	0.68	11.81	0.79	0.65	0.62
41	Moldova	0.75	0.67	10.30	0.72	0.66	0.64

Aggregations

Notes

172 from 189 countries score at least 0.5 in the Human Development Index with most low ranking countries located in Africa. Inequality-adjusted Index primarily affects the central and latin american countries and drops even lower the African contintent. Top 10 again consists mostly by european countries. Also countries and territories such as Hong Kong, Singapore, United States and Israel despite their high score, are highly affected by their inequalities.

Greece ranks in 32th place worldwide and 22th place in Europe on Human Development Index. Due to high inequalities (coefficient of 10.79) loses 0.1 on the IHDI. It's also worth noting that is above countries like Italy and Portugal in the inequality-adjusted index.

Index comparison

Below are 4 scatterplots presenting the correlation of Human Development Index and Inequality-adjusted Index with the other indices.

	Country	Regions	Population	Press	Freedom	Law	CPI	HDI	IHDI
0	Albania	Europe & Central Asia	3639453	56.41	67.0	0.491574	35.0	0.80	0.71
1	Czech Republic	Europe & Central Asia	10211904	80.54	91.0	0.728169	54.0	0.90	0.86
2	Austria	Europe & Central Asia	8210281	76.74	93.0	0.812422	74.0	0.92	0.86
3	Belgium	Europe & Central Asia	10414336	78.86	96.0	0.791767	73.0	0.93	0.86
4	Bulgaria	Europe & Central Asia	7204687	59.12	79.0	0.541395	42.0	0.82	0.72

Press freedom and Human development: While most african and southern asian countries ranked consistently low on Human Development Index, the most developed countries appear to have a somewhat positive correlation with Press Freedom.

Freedom in the World and Human development: The most developed countries enjoy better conditions in regard to political rights and civil liberties with a notable positive correlation.

Rule of Law and human development: Among the 4 indices human development seems to be most correlated with how rule of law is experienced and perceived in each country.

Corruption and human development: The most developed countries seem to experience the least corruption.

Also inequality-adjusted human development index, except for the lower scores seems that does not change the correlation with the 4 other indices.

Combine Results

PCA is a dimensionality reduction technique, part of unsupervised machine learning. We could create a composite index by simply taking the average of the five indices for each country but that would assume that each index contributes the same to the final score. By applying PCA the new index will be a linear combination of the 5 indices. The coefficients (or loadings) of each index will be calculated in an attempt to maximize the variance in the data (explainability of each dimension).

I will use two classes from the sklearn library:

• StandardScaler: scaling the original data to prepare them for PCA
• PCA: the actual Principal Component Analysis transformer

PCA(n_components=1)

In a Jupyter environment, please rerun this cell to show the HTML representation or trust the notebook.
On GitHub, the HTML representation is unable to render, please try loading this page with nbviewer.org.

'Explaind variance from one principal component:0.77'

Loading (coefficient) for each index:

{'Press': 0.40845732843607085,
 'Freedom': 0.451039954125099,
 'Law': 0.4903204027127532,
 'CPI': 0.46966586390126036,
 'HDI': 0.4107620352456917}

(-3.355239503249041, 4.256579933962062)

---

NOTE: If we use PCA's transform method to calculate the new index, the new data will have a range from -3.36 to 4.019. Instead we will use a weighted average with weights being the coefficients calculated from PCA.

---

Index(['Country', 'Regions', 'Population', 'Press', 'Freedom', 'Law', 'CPI',
       'HDI', 'IHDI', 'Combined Index'],
      dtype='object')

Countries ranked based on a combination of 5 indices

Pos.	Country	Combined Index	Press Freedom Index	Freedom in the World Index	Rule of Law Index	Corruption Perceptions Index	Human Development Index
1	Norway	92.54	92.65	100.00	0.90	85.00	0.96
2	Denmark	91.77	90.27	97.00	0.90	88.00	0.94
3	Finland	91.56	88.42	100.00	0.88	88.00	0.94
4	Sweden	90.65	88.84	100.00	0.86	85.00	0.94
5	New Zealand	89.25	83.54	99.00	0.83	88.00	0.93
6	Germany	86.84	82.04	94.00	0.84	80.00	0.95
7	Ireland	86.83	88.30	97.00	0.81	74.00	0.96
8	Netherlands	86.79	77.93	97.00	0.83	82.00	0.94
9	Luxembourg	86.43	79.81	97.00	0.83	81.00	0.92
10	Canada	85.08	81.74	98.00	0.80	74.00	0.93
11	Estonia	84.99	88.83	94.00	0.81	74.00	0.89
12	United Kingdom	84.04	78.71	93.00	0.79	78.00	0.93
13	Belgium	83.77	78.86	96.00	0.79	73.00	0.93
14	Austria	83.25	76.74	93.00	0.81	74.00	0.92
15	Australia	82.85	73.77	95.00	0.79	73.00	0.94
16	Japan	80.80	64.37	96.00	0.79	73.00	0.92
17	France	79.76	78.53	89.00	0.72	71.00	0.90
18	Portugal	79.44	87.07	95.00	0.70	62.00	0.86
19	Lithuania	78.99	84.14	89.00	0.75	61.00	0.88
20	Uruguay	78.98	72.03	97.00	0.71	73.00	0.82
21	Spain	77.70	76.71	90.00	0.73	61.00	0.90
22	Czech Republic	77.11	80.54	91.00	0.73	54.00	0.90
23	United States	76.62	72.74	83.00	0.69	67.00	0.93
24	Latvia	76.45	79.17	88.00	0.71	59.00	0.87
25	South Korea	76.16	72.11	83.00	0.74	62.00	0.92
26	Costa Rica	76.16	85.92	91.00	0.68	58.00	0.81
27	Slovenia	74.71	68.54	90.00	0.68	57.00	0.92
28	Chile	74.47	60.61	94.00	0.66	67.00	0.85
29	Slovakia	73.93	78.37	90.00	0.66	52.00	0.86
30	Cyprus	73.46	65.97	93.00	0.68	53.00	0.89
31	Italy	73.36	68.16	90.00	0.66	56.00	0.89
32	Malta	72.19	61.55	89.00	0.68	54.00	0.90
33	Poland	70.50	65.64	81.00	0.64	56.00	0.88
34	Singapore	69.99	44.23	47.00	0.78	85.00	0.94
35	Croatia	69.01	70.42	85.00	0.61	47.00	0.85
36	Romania	67.88	68.46	83.00	0.63	45.00	0.83
37	Greece	67.83	55.52	87.00	0.61	49.00	0.89
38	Argentina	66.89	77.28	84.00	0.56	38.00	0.84
39	Jamaica	66.71	83.35	80.00	0.57	44.00	0.73
40	Namibia	66.44	81.84	77.00	0.62	49.00	0.65
41	Hong Kong	66.27	41.64	43.00	0.75	76.00	0.95
42	Trinidad and Tobago	66.11	78.68	82.00	0.53	41.00	0.80
43	South Africa	65.00	75.56	79.00	0.58	44.00	0.71
44	Botswana	63.48	58.49	72.00	0.59	55.00	0.74
45	Bulgaria	62.65	59.12	79.00	0.54	42.00	0.82
46	Georgia	62.40	59.30	58.00	0.61	55.00	0.81
47	Panama	62.36	62.78	83.00	0.52	36.00	0.82
48	Suriname	61.25	68.95	79.00	0.49	39.00	0.74
49	Hungary	61.06	59.80	69.00	0.52	43.00	0.85
50	Ghana	60.99	67.43	80.00	0.55	43.00	0.61
51	Mongolia	60.79	59.17	84.00	0.54	35.00	0.74
52	Guyana	60.48	76.41	73.00	0.50	39.00	0.68
53	North Macedonia	60.16	68.44	67.00	0.53	39.00	0.77
54	Dominican Republic	58.66	76.90	68.00	0.48	30.00	0.76
55	Moldova	58.64	73.47	62.00	0.51	36.00	0.75
56	Peru	58.57	61.75	72.00	0.49	36.00	0.78
57	Ecuador	58.43	64.61	71.00	0.48	36.00	0.76
58	Tunisia	58.17	58.49	64.00	0.53	44.00	0.74
59	Brazil	57.90	55.36	73.00	0.50	38.00	0.76
60	Serbia	57.58	61.51	62.00	0.49	38.00	0.81
61	Malaysia	57.22	51.55	50.00	0.57	48.00	0.81
62	Albania	56.79	56.41	67.00	0.49	35.00	0.80
63	United Arab Emirates	56.56	44.46	17.00	0.64	69.00	0.89
64	Senegal	55.93	63.07	68.00	0.55	43.00	0.51
65	Bosnia and Herzegovina	55.82	65.64	53.00	0.52	35.00	0.78
66	Ukraine	54.86	55.76	61.00	0.51	32.00	0.78
67	Paraguay	54.06	58.36	65.00	0.48	30.00	0.73
68	Colombia	53.87	42.43	64.00	0.49	39.00	0.77
69	Indonesia	53.71	49.27	59.00	0.52	38.00	0.72
70	Nepal	52.43	62.67	57.00	0.52	33.00	0.60
71	Burkina Faso	52.33	73.12	53.00	0.50	42.00	0.45
72	Malawi	52.31	61.40	66.00	0.52	35.00	0.48
73	Sri Lanka	52.04	42.13	55.00	0.50	37.00	0.78
74	India	52.04	41.00	66.00	0.50	40.00	0.64
75	El Salvador	51.83	54.09	59.00	0.48	34.00	0.67
76	Jordan	51.44	48.66	33.00	0.55	49.00	0.73
77	Sierra Leone	51.35	71.03	65.00	0.44	34.00	0.45
78	Mexico	51.15	47.57	60.00	0.43	31.00	0.78
79	Côte d'Ivoire	50.90	74.46	49.00	0.45	36.00	0.54
80	Benin	50.44	48.39	59.00	0.49	42.00	0.55
81	Bolivia	50.14	47.58	66.00	0.39	30.00	0.72
82	The Gambia	49.91	69.25	47.00	0.49	37.00	0.50
83	Philippines	49.13	41.84	55.00	0.46	33.00	0.72
84	Kenya	48.67	64.59	48.00	0.44	30.00	0.60
85	Liberia	48.28	62.77	60.00	0.44	29.00	0.48
86	Kazakhstan	47.93	48.28	23.00	0.52	37.00	0.82
87	Zambia	47.84	55.40	51.00	0.44	33.00	0.58
88	Madagascar	47.82	58.02	61.00	0.44	26.00	0.53
89	Thailand	47.69	50.15	29.00	0.50	35.00	0.78
90	Rwanda	47.47	45.18	22.00	0.62	53.00	0.54
91	Morocco	47.43	45.42	37.00	0.49	39.00	0.69
92	Algeria	46.39	45.53	32.00	0.49	33.00	0.75
93	Turkey	46.33	41.25	32.00	0.42	38.00	0.82
94	Guatemala	46.26	47.94	51.00	0.44	25.00	0.66
95	Niger	46.14	67.80	51.00	0.44	31.00	0.39
96	Kyrgyzstan	46.06	64.25	27.00	0.47	27.00	0.70
97	Lebanon	45.61	46.58	42.00	0.45	24.00	0.74
98	Togo	44.85	57.17	42.00	0.45	30.00	0.52
99	Tanzania	43.92	48.28	34.00	0.47	39.00	0.53
100	Belarus	43.07	39.62	8.00	0.48	41.00	0.82
101	Angola	42.73	57.17	30.00	0.43	29.00	0.58
102	Russia	42.32	38.82	19.00	0.46	29.00	0.82
103	Mauritania	41.77	58.10	35.00	0.36	28.00	0.55
104	Nigeria	41.33	46.79	43.00	0.41	24.00	0.54
105	Guinea	41.02	59.82	34.00	0.41	25.00	0.48
106	Honduras	40.94	34.61	47.00	0.39	23.00	0.63
107	Mozambique	40.61	49.89	43.00	0.40	26.00	0.46
108	Uzbekistan	40.55	45.74	11.00	0.49	28.00	0.72
109	Vietnam	40.48	26.11	19.00	0.49	39.00	0.70
110	Bangladesh	40.40	36.63	39.00	0.40	26.00	0.63
111	Haiti	40.38	64.55	33.00	0.38	20.00	0.51
112	China	40.23	25.17	9.00	0.47	45.00	0.76
113	Ethiopia	39.91	50.53	23.00	0.41	39.00	0.48
114	Mali	39.85	54.48	32.00	0.43	29.00	0.43
115	Uganda	39.65	46.35	34.00	0.39	27.00	0.54
116	Pakistan	39.15	37.99	37.00	0.39	28.00	0.56
117	Republic of Congo	38.29	58.64	17.00	0.42	21.00	0.57
118	Zimbabwe	37.88	44.94	28.00	0.39	23.00	0.57
119	Egypt	36.85	30.23	18.00	0.35	33.00	0.71
120	Nicaragua	36.15	37.09	23.00	0.38	20.00	0.66
121	Iran	35.89	23.22	14.00	0.42	25.00	0.78
122	Cameroon	35.76	49.10	15.00	0.35	27.00	0.56
123	Cambodia	35.52	43.48	24.00	0.32	23.00	0.59
124	Democratic Republic of the Congo	33.02	47.66	19.00	0.35	19.00	0.48
125	Sudan	32.46	40.96	10.00	0.42	20.00	0.51
126	Myanmar	31.61	25.03	9.00	0.39	28.00	0.58
127	Venezuela	31.60	37.78	14.00	0.27	14.00	0.71
128	Afghanistan	29.55	38.27	10.00	0.35	16.00	0.51

Final Notes

The same trends that we observed in individual indices also appear in the combined index. Northern and West European countries are in the top of the rank and consistently higher than countries in south and each Europe. Other countries that standout for their good score are Canada and United States in the north America, Costa Rica in Central America, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and French Guiana in South America, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand in Asia and Oceania. Unfortunately the majority of countries in Africa and Asia receive a low score.

Out of the 128 countries rated on all 5 indicators, the last five are Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Venezuela.

---

Notebook Created on June 2022 by Mysiloglou Dimitrios